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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’ve found reading this post to be very informative.  I am a woman who has “withheld” sex from my husband and it is very sobering to see the other perspective on this situation.

To the OP and the many responders in kind, I sympathize with your situation and my heart truly hurts for you as I realize that my husband must have had/have many of the same feelings as you are expressing.

To shed some light to the other side of the coin, I would like to share why it is that I lost the desire to have sex with my spouse.

The OP stated the commonly known fact that women expect a man to change, and they don’t and that men expect the women to stay the same, and they don’t.  I know that this was the downfall to my marriage.  When my husband and I were pre-kids, we had sex often.  I am very much a go with the flow kind of person and my husband tends to like to dictate the pace of the day, so generally we were focused on him and I would say 90% of the day was dedicated to him (I am not at all laying any sort of guilt on this, it was fine at the time).  When our first child arrived, six years into our relationship, I felt he did not change to adapt to the child.  He still wanted everything to stay the same, and by this, I mean everything.  I think that the child made him feel out of place and he was grasping to maintain his status.  This is understandable in human nature, but trading in our paid off sedan for a 2 door sports car 2 weeks after the birth of our child does not instill much confidence in working as a team.  It felt to me that he was more concerned with maintaining his routines, physique, etc. than embracing the changing family dynamic.

Our relationship started to deteriorate within months of our child’s arrival (which, from reading these boards is a pretty common occurrence, so I would say that it was a normal bump in the relationship).  My husband was always loving to me, but often got frustrated with me when I could not focus my attention on him 100%.  When there were rare moments where I had 15 minutes to myself, he would often want my undivided attention at that point.  I felt that I was never getting any time to myself.  He used to jokingly say that he’s not #1 anymore and he’d taken second place.  I would comment to him that he’s lucky that he’s in second place, because my needs are last.  This is just a brief capsulation of how these things can start.  I think that it got to the point that I was devoting so much of my time to others that there was nothing left for me.  I always enjoyed having sex with my husband, but for me, I think there was a switch that turned and he became more of someone that I took care of vs. someone that I partnered with – sex was the last thing that I wanted – it almost felt like I was having sex with my child vs. my husband.

In the beginning, he would often ask for sex, but stopped after being rebuffed and waited for my queues…which as much as I wanted to want to give him, I could not muster the desire.  He and I had a discussion and he told me outright that he could probably last in a sexless marriage for a couple of years, but that he would likely have an affair to fill his needs.  Internally, I was okay with this.

This is very long winded and I’m not sure if I’m giving you any perspective.  My husband and I split over the summer – which I initiated.  After the first 2 months, which were hellish, we have settled down and are ok.  I know that we are uncommon, but I truly want happiness for him and we get along much better now that we do not have the sex void over our heads.  We have 2 young children (2 and 4) and I think that it is best for them.  We went to a therapist and asked what was best for the children (custody wise, mainly).  She said what is best for the children is for them to see their parents have healthy relationships.  
[/quote]

PP - I think this is a really good description of what happens in a lot of these "sexless" marriages.  My DH and I had this dynamic for 3-4 years.  It started toward the end of my pregnancy and continued until he had a brief affair.  We reconciled, but I still haven't forgiven him for either the affair or for being totally and completely unconsiderate of my needs for so long.  No, I did not want him to "change" after the kids were born into anything that he wasn't, but I absolutely expected him to step up and be a 50% partner in parenting and he let me be the 100% partner and swooped in every once in a while to "help".

Now part of this was my fault of course.  I took a lot on myself because he bitterly complained whenever I asked him to do something and eventually I just stopped asking.  Like he always said "why don't you go out with my girlfriends and he'll watch the kids some night".  In the beginning I did, but then listening to him bitch about how miserable his night was going to be as I was getting ready, and then getting 2-3 calls as I was out with the baby screaming in the background, and then coming home to a complete mess of a house, baby, and husband.  It was just not worth it.  So I stopped asking to go out and stopped asking for help.  And eventually everything because my responsibility.  I'm sure he sees it that I never "let" him do anything or that I complained about the way he did things when he tried to help.  I was the one up all night with the kids, neither of whom slept well for two years.  I took on all the daycare decisions and the drop-off/pick-up coordination (and again, I tried to share these things in the beginning, but he either wouldn't do them or would complain bitterly about how busy he was at work and how much work all this was and how much money this was costing us, etc).

We both work full-time.  He would come home and lay out on the couch and tell me he needed some unwinding time.  We had fights about this in the beginning, but then it became easier just to ignore him and cook dinner with a kid on my hip and then clean up everything and then get baby ready for bed and nurse him down every single night because husband would act like he was put upon and that he just needed some "me" time after working all day.  Every party we went to - I was the default one watching the kids.  He would go and waltz off like he was there by himself and leave me to run around after them.  He started traveling more frequently for work and saying that he just "needed" those weeks of travel to take a break (from us, I would hear, even though he didn't say it).  Where was my break?

At the end of each night, after handling practically everything about our lives, working a full day, getting the kids up and out and then home and fed and in bed.  Knowing that the baby was going to wake up again in an hour, and he would make me feel guilty for not wanting to be intimate with him.  I was exhausted and resentful and hormonal.  And angry.  And perhaps it would have been better to talk to him about these things or force him to help or any other way of coping, but I did not.  I shut down.  I would still be intimate at least once a week - I was not "withholding" it entirely.  But I think it was probably obvious that I was not into it, although I did my best.

And he saw it as rejection and I was putting the children first and I wasn't thinking about his needs.  I guess I was.  But I didn't feel like he cared an ounce about anything I was going through and how much I was putting into caring for our babies.  He never a single time said he was sorry that I was so tired or just hugged me or anything.

Then on one of those travel weeks he was doing, he slept with someone.  Said he was checked out of the marriage, felt rejected, needed sex.

I think this is very common (though maybe not to the same degree).  Certainly some wives withhold intimacy for other reasons, but I would suggest taking a long hard look at what your wife is trying to tell you.  Are you showing her you care about HER and about how she feels in the way she wants to be cared for?  [/quote]

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