Anonymous wrote:If she's playful out in public then hike up her dress out in public dude. Find a secluded spot.

I would love it if my husband did this! Men need to be more aggressive.

Unless husbands are total assholes I have trouble understanding women who don’t occasionally have sex even if they aren’t in the mood. My libido is lower than my DH’s, he’s a good partner and a great dad. Sometimes he’ll initiate and while I’m not in the mood I can “fake it till I make it.” I don’t fake orgasms but I can be an enthusiastic partner even if I’m not initially into it. I do it bc it’s important to him and I love him.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like a typical marriage especially if the kids are still young. Too tired. When kids are a bit older and wife hits midlife and her hormones will go crazy, she will want sex every night.

Kids are in middle school. I had a friend who related his mid 40s wife had a sudden surge in libido midlife and the rest if us we're looking at him like he had three heads (and won the lottery). So while that spike does happen, my sense is it's very rare.

Wife doesn't want to have sex in the morning either or mid-week unless I really push for it. As I type this, seems like the answer is fairly obvious, my marriage isn't good and probably won't last (although wife seems happy, but who knows).

I created this post to get a sense of whether the lack of sex after date night is more normal than I thought or if it's likely another red flag that I should be seeing that our marriage is likely headed to an end.

Tell her that regular sex (2x or 3x) per week is a marital deal breaker for you. This might snap her out of the tired-Mommy fog, or at least you will know that she just wants a room mate, so there’s no need to take her on dates while you accelerate the end.

Nothing says turn-on more than an ultimatum. Really, if my husband came and laid down the law like that I'd be pissed.

Their marriage is headed towards destruction anyway but I say he owes her the chance to save it. But you advise he jumps directly to the divorce/cheating stage without ever getting honest? Well OK if that’s what you prefer but I think a sexless wife deserves at least a final chance.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like a typical marriage especially if the kids are still young. Too tired. When kids are a bit older and wife hits midlife and her hormones will go crazy, she will want sex every night.

Kids are in middle school. I had a friend who related his mid 40s wife had a sudden surge in libido midlife and the rest if us we're looking at him like he had three heads (and won the lottery). So while that spike does happen, my sense is it's very rare.

Wife doesn't want to have sex in the morning either or mid-week unless I really push for it. As I type this, seems like the answer is fairly obvious, my marriage isn't good and probably won't last (although wife seems happy, but who knows).

I created this post to get a sense of whether the lack of sex after date night is more normal than I thought or if it's likely another red flag that I should be seeing that our marriage is likely headed to an end.

I can’t speak to the middle school part. But as a woman I definitely hear from all my friends that they are exhausted with kids from the 0-5 range and even beyond. You’re doing well with 2x a month. As for the hormones, women hit perimenopause at different ages and it lasts for different times. During that period there are a lot of highs and lows — estrogen can spike and drop frequently. So some women will want it more, some not. Men should educate themselves about women’s sexuality.

In any case what matters is your relationship. If you can’t unpack this with your wife, maybe therapy? Is there a safe space in which you could explore her fantasies and wishes? Maybe she is frustrated because our sexual culture focuses so much on the man’s point of view.

Your reading comprehension is rather far off. No, he is NOT “doing well with 2x a month” his marriage is circling the bowl and he’s making plans for life without her. Women should educate themselves about men’s sexuality. If you are unsure what frequency he needs, simply recall your first few years together.

We don't always have sex on date nights but we have an active sex life (3-4 times a week). So even if we don't have sex on date night, we have plenty of it.

I'm the DW and we have a 6 year old

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like a typical marriage especially if the kids are still young. Too tired. When kids are a bit older and wife hits midlife and her hormones will go crazy, she will want sex every night.

Kids are in middle school. I had a friend who related his mid 40s wife had a sudden surge in libido midlife and the rest if us we're looking at him like he had three heads (and won the lottery). So while that spike does happen, my sense is it's very rare.

Wife doesn't want to have sex in the morning either or mid-week unless I really push for it. As I type this, seems like the answer is fairly obvious, my marriage isn't good and probably won't last (although wife seems happy, but who knows).

I created this post to get a sense of whether the lack of sex after date night is more normal than I thought or if it's likely another red flag that I should be seeing that our marriage is likely headed to an end.

Tell her that regular sex (2x or 3x) per week is a marital deal breaker for you. This might snap her out of the tired-Mommy fog, or at least you will know that she just wants a room mate, so there’s no need to take her on dates while you accelerate the end.

Nothing says turn-on more than an ultimatum. Really, if my husband came and laid down the law like that I'd be pissed.

Anonymous wrote:But the thing to keep in mind is that her not wanting to have sex with you, while it sucks immensely, is not necessarily a reflection of whether she loves you or not. I've been there. I know how tempting it is to feel like if my wife loved me, she'd want to have sex with me. That's just not necessarily so -- much as I would like it.

*************

Unless there is some actual medical reason preventing her from having sex with you, OF COURSE it is a reflection of how much she loves you. And of how much (or how little) she respects you.

If your wife loved you, OF COURSE she'd want to have sex with you. Even if only to please you.

But your needs don't matter to your wife.

She doesn't love you.

Buzz off you nut job. Unless by "medical reason" you're including weak hormonal-induced desire and lack of novelty.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like a typical marriage especially if the kids are still young. Too tired. When kids are a bit older and wife hits midlife and her hormones will go crazy, she will want sex every night.

Kids are in middle school. I had a friend who related his mid 40s wife had a sudden surge in libido midlife and the rest if us we're looking at him like he had three heads (and won the lottery). So while that spike does happen, my sense is it's very rare.

Wife doesn't want to have sex in the morning either or mid-week unless I really push for it. As I type this, seems like the answer is fairly obvious, my marriage isn't good and probably won't last (although wife seems happy, but who knows).

I created this post to get a sense of whether the lack of sex after date night is more normal than I thought or if it's likely another red flag that I should be seeing that our marriage is likely headed to an end.

Tell her that regular sex (2x or 3x) per week is a marital deal breaker for you. This might snap her out of the tired-Mommy fog, or at least you will know that she just wants a room mate, so there’s no need to take her on dates while you accelerate the end.

But the thing to keep in mind is that her not wanting to have sex with you, while it sucks immensely, is not necessarily a reflection of whether she loves you or not. I've been there. I know how tempting it is to feel like if my wife loved me, she'd want to have sex with me. That's just not necessarily so -- much as I would like it.

*************

Unless there is some actual medical reason preventing her from having sex with you, OF COURSE it is a reflection of how much she loves you. And of how much (or how little) she respects you.

If your wife loved you, OF COURSE she'd want to have sex with you. Even if only to please you.

But your needs don't matter to your wife.

She doesn't love you.

Anonymous wrote:I’m a wife. I’m often tired. The metal and physical load of my day is exhausting. I do want to have sex with my husband and felt resentful and unappreciated when he would show up once in a blue moon with date night or the occasional “helping” around the house. It seemed disengenuous to helping me, and about a means to (his) end. Which is a difficult spot for him to be in as well. Nothing gets better without some communication. In a non-blaming way you two need to have a conversation about what is and isn’t working for you.

I agree with the suggestion of sex before going out, that way the pressure is off and you can both relax and eat and rest however you like. If sex happens, great, if not it happened earlier.

It’s a total buzz kill to come home to make polite conversation with the babysitter, or grandparents, a kid invariably wakes up etc...and the mood is kinda lost. It takes constant input to the relationship bank to have something to draw from.

Between loving partners, sex should not be regarded as just another tiring "chore" to be checked off the "to do" list, and placed well down below everything else on the "to do" list to boot.

If you "do want to have sex with my husband" then you would actually have sex with your husband. Just like even if you were tired, but wanted to go to the gym, you would go to the gym.

Feeling resentful and unappreciated because (?) you believe that your husband isn't prioritizing your needs the way you want him to, is irrelevant, if YOU are prioritizing having sex with your spouse as an important part of your marriage.

It's almost like you're saying that if he won't do the dishes or the laundry enough to suit you (or whatever else it is you think he should be doing), in retaliation, you won't take your car in to have the oil changed when it's needed for routine maintenance. You'd rather blow up your engine in order to prove a point.

Spiteful, and childish.

Why do so many women think this way about their marriages, and about sex in their marriages?

Only because most women believe (rightfully so in most cases) that men have an overall greater need for marital sex than women do.

So, you and your sisters unconsciously, or not so unconsciously, use the withholding of sex from your spouses to get leverage in the relationship.

Presumably, you don't NOT do something with your spouse that you actually enjoy, just because there is some other part of the relationship you're unhappy with.

That's called cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Now, if the reason that you don't have more sex with your spouse is because you really don't want to, regardless of how many chores he does or doesn't do, then that's really your issue, isn't it?

Why don't you like sex more?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a woman, and while I disagree with the undertones of 7:32’s post, I also don’t like the concept of “date night” for married couples as it seems to exacerbate a lot of issues, and I agree that you should unlink sex from going out as a couple.

You should be doing both regularly, to maintain different parts of your relationship, but unless there is a communicated underlying reason, you should be having sex more than once a week (or however often you go out).

Have you had a clothed, non-confrontational conversation about what that underlying issue is? Have you jointly taken any steps to mitigate it? No results? Time for another clothed, non-confrontational conversation...

To a point. If you get to the point where the excuses keep coming, or the problem is addressed but the sex still isn’t coming (within reason), you need to decide what you want to do with the rest of your life.

I’m sorry you are dealing with this...

OP here, the reason I mention date night with the potential of sex is because, for example, if I initiate mid week after kids in bed she claims it's tough to transition from Mom to wife and needs time to feel connected. So date night in theory should give us time to reconnect, to be playful, have a drink, separate kids out, etc. But that doesn't work either.

I hate to say this, but some women really appreciate chore play. She might be exhausted because once the kids go to bed she does the dishes and straightens up the house before she is able to go to bed. And it would make many women resentful of their husbands if he doesn’t help take some of this off her plate.

Women who actually want to have sex with their husbands have been known to leave the dirty dishes in the sink.

I’m a wife. I’m often tired. The metal and physical load of my day is exhausting. I do want to have sex with my husband and felt resentful and unappreciated when he would show up once in a blue moon with date night or the occasional “helping” around the house. It seemed disengenuous to helping me, and about a means to (his) end. Which is a difficult spot for him to be in as well. Nothing gets better without some communication. In a non-blaming way you two need to have a conversation about what is and isn’t working for you.

I agree with the suggestion of sex before going out, that way the pressure is off and you can both relax and eat and rest however you like. If sex happens, great, if not it happened earlier.

It’s a total buzz kill to come home to make polite conversation with the babysitter, or grandparents, a kid invariably wakes up etc...and the mood is kinda lost. It takes constant input to the relationship bank to have something to draw from.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP that’s crap. Mid 40s wife here married 15 years and still have great sex on date nights and non date nights as well. Avg about 4x/week. We have four kids.
What was your sex life like when you first got together?

Sex life was great when we first got together. And when married. Died off when kids came and never really came back. Yes, we have toys, she will use one and can finish. But she is never, ever in the mood, no desire to talk about it. If we have the clothed conversation she will either cry or get huffy and turn it into "ok fine lets just do it now then."

I get her libido is way lower, I don't get why it wouldn't occur to her to do something nice for me once in a while even if she wasn't in the mood.

This sounds a lot like my marriage. It's not good, but it's not necessarily a red flag about your relationship unless sex is a deal breaker for you. (And it may very well be a deal breaker, and there is no shame in that -- sex is important.) But the thing to keep in mind is that her not wanting to have sex with you, while it sucks immensely, is not necessarily a reflection of whether she loves you or not. I've been there. I know how tempting it is to feel like if my wife loved me, she'd want to have sex with me. That's just not necessarily so -- much as I would like it.

In my case, I've never found choreplay or date nights or "clothed conversations" to move the needle at all with respect to sexual frequency. These people who think they have the answers don't. How many of the people here telling you to have conversations can actually say "our sex life sucked, one of us never ever wanted to have sex, but then we talked about it, and now our sex life is frequent and rewarding"? They're just telling you what seems like ought to work. But, in reality, they don't often work. I mean, if you haven't ever talked to her about it, then tell her. But you don't need to talk about it more than 3 or 4 times. If nothing has changed after that, it's not because you're not talking enough. At that point, she knows, she just can't or won't change.

If there is something problematic in your relationship other than sex that you two need to work on, then by all means, work on them. Work on yourself just because making yourself better is a good thing to do. But don't carry around an unrealistic expectation that any of it is going to make your wife hot for you. The reality is that's probably not going to happen. And, while sad, I think this is a fairly normal state of affairs for a long-time married couple. Hormones just don't cooperate. Make your peace with it or end the marriage. There's good and bad to both courses of action.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP that’s crap. Mid 40s wife here married 15 years and still have great sex on date nights and non date nights as well. Avg about 4x/week. We have four kids.
What was your sex life like when you first got together?

Sex life was great when we first got together. And when married. Died off when kids came and never really came back. Yes, we have toys, she will use one and can finish. But she is never, ever in the mood, no desire to talk about it. If we have the clothed conversation she will either cry or get huffy and turn it into "ok fine lets just do it now then."

I get her libido is way lower, I don't get why it wouldn't occur to her to do something nice for me once in a while even if she wasn't in the mood.

Your wife married you under false pretenses.

She used sex as a lure to get you to marry you and procreate, not because she actually enjoyed it with you.

Mission accomplished, procreation completed, ergo--no need for sex with you.

She is giving the minimum barest of sex at this point, that she believes will keep you from divorcing her or cheating on her. That's all.

Since you're not a very demanding kind of guy, minimum is very very little.

Tell her that if she doesn't want to have sex with you on a more regular basis then you will regard yourself as having an open marriage and will look for someone outside the marriage to have your sexual needs fulfilled.

If she doesn't like that, she either steps up or shuts up, or, she or you file for divorce. If that's what's going to happen, so be it, because your wife is exactly the type of woman who blames all the marital problems on the husband, uses that as an excuse to have an affair, and then all of a sudden she finds herself very sexual with the new guy.

By the way, why are you assuming she's not already cheating on you?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like a typical marriage especially if the kids are still young. Too tired. When kids are a bit older and wife hits midlife and her hormones will go crazy, she will want sex every night.

Kids are in middle school. I had a friend who related his mid 40s wife had a sudden surge in libido midlife and the rest if us we're looking at him like he had three heads (and won the lottery). So while that spike does happen, my sense is it's very rare.

Wife doesn't want to have sex in the morning either or mid-week unless I really push for it. As I type this, seems like the answer is fairly obvious, my marriage isn't good and probably won't last (although wife seems happy, but who knows).

I created this post to get a sense of whether the lack of sex after date night is more normal than I thought or if it's likely another red flag that I should be seeing that our marriage is likely headed to an end.

This sounds like you already decided you want it to end and are looking to justify it. You sound disingenuous. And not very nice.