Anonymous wrote:You're stuck, OP. The years will only increase your regret. You know you're not leaving him. This is why we women never get anywhere. We erase ourselves for our children.

Ugh, that's so depressing...

Anonymous wrote:I’m in a close to sexless marriage and don’t know what to do. We’ve been married for four years and sex has never been that consistent. He’s a once a week guy. He used to drink a lot and couldn’t perform when he’d been drinking. I was often very frustrated sexually. Looking back, I should have left.

Then I got pregnant. He wouldn’t have sex with me while pregnant as he couldn’t stay hard. I went almost a year not having sex. Our son is almost a 1.5 and on average we have sex once a month. I have so much resentment that even if he wanted to have sex, I don’t want to.

Has anyone dealt with this and turned the marriage around? I don’t even know where to start.

Have a talk with your husband and get yourselves to a marriage counselor with a sub-specialty in sex therapy. If you want to save your marriage and improve things, this is where you start. He'll get help with his performance issues and you'll both learn what the foundational issues are and how to move forward.

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Anonymous wrote:The classic best selling book “His Needs, Her Needs” identifies men’s #1 relationship need as ... wait for it ... sexual fulfillment. So I’d call that a keystone, not just a response to deprivation. Any lady who has trouble believing this, I’d suggest you read the book.

So it’s a keystone of his needs. Not of her needs, and it’s not THE keystone of marriage.

Okay, ask the people having regular sex. Studies show they’re happier.

Correlation does not equal causation. Perhaps they are happier because other needs are being met, which then leads to more sex.

I’m not denying that sex isn’t a need for men. But women have needs as well, and I don’t think it’s fair to overlook those and declare sex to be THE most important need.

Bit of an apples-and-oranges situation. Sex is a need that (in traditional marriages anyway) can't be met outside of the marriage. For the most part, it's permissible to get nonsexual needs met outside of the marriage.

I’m sorry, OP. I’m in a similar situation. DH never highly sexed, definitely has performance issues, and is now on anti-depressants (which is good, and overdue, and has helped a lot with other issues), but our sex life is pretty non-existent. I don’t think of myself as having a super high sex drive— I would be okay with once a week — but I would like sex to not be non-existent. He rarely seems interested; when he briefly shows interest he cant stay hard.

I’m pretty down about it, and definitely wondering how to handle this. That is, can I live with it for another year or so? Indefinitely? Can it change? What could change it? Is the rest of the relationship good enough to make me put up with this? Would I want an open marriage? Etc. He is a good man and has many wonderful qualities, but he also has a lot of issues that can make marriage difficult even aside from the lack of sex.

We have two teens who adore him, and I guess I am mentally saying to myself, there are four more years with the kids at home, which is four years to see if we can make this better. If we can’t after four years, I think this marriage probably ends when the kids are both in college.

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Anonymous wrote:The classic best selling book “His Needs, Her Needs” identifies men’s #1 relationship need as ... wait for it ... sexual fulfillment. So I’d call that a keystone, not just a response to deprivation. Any lady who has trouble believing this, I’d suggest you read the book.

So it’s a keystone of his needs. Not of her needs, and it’s not THE keystone of marriage.

Okay, ask the people having regular sex. Studies show they’re happier.

Correlation does not equal causation. Perhaps they are happier because other needs are being met, which then leads to more sex.

I’m not denying that sex isn’t a need for men. But women have needs as well, and I don’t think it’s fair to overlook those and declare sex to be THE most important need.

You're stuck, OP. The years will only increase your regret. You know you're not leaving him. This is why we women never get anywhere. We erase ourselves for our children.

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Anonymous wrote:If my wife of 18 years recoils from my touch (hand on back and the like), considers 2x a month having plenty of sex, and makes excuses, is the marriage over?

It's slightly less over than mine... I'm not even getting 2x a month.

I almost feel like I could live with that. But nah, it's over.

Just don't expect it to get better. Honestly, I felt the same way for a long time. LONG time. Actually, we have gotten better but it has been very difficult.

10 second fix to your sexless marriage, 100% guaranteed success: walk into the kitchen and announce "Honey, I've decided to stop pretending that you want a sexual relationship with me. From now on, I consider our marriage to be consensual non-monogamous"

This would absolutely not work for many people.
Personally, I would say ok (woman here).

If I said it, the next thing my husband would do is walk out the door and go to a divorce attorney.

It would not fix a marriage...it would end it. Terrible advice.

Marriage is way more than sex.

True, but it's the keystone in the arch. Remove it, and all the "other stuff" is inevitably going to collapse.

Sorry, I disagree. It was like that with past boyfriends, which seems really shallow. I take the long view of marriage. I don’t rate sex as high enough to be “the keystone of the arch.” Part of the arch maybe, but not the key thing. That was the problem with every relationship I had before marriage. And obviously, I did marry those guys. Sex was rated so highly it trumped other things.

If you DH genuinely agrees that sex is not critically important, then I guess you're good. But I doubt it.

Any partner who believes that sex is not critically important has no right to complain when their spouse goes and does that unimportant thing with somebody else.

This is such BS. If you've tried to discuss with your spouse and no effort is being made AND you're honest about your extra-marital affair, sure, you may have a point. But cheating is still cheating b/c it's dishonest. If you're doing it behind his/her back, it's dishonest AND you're a coward.

I also agree iwth the person who said sex is important but far less important than other things. Have you ever stayed in a relationship for the sex? I have and while it was great for awhile, it was not more important than the other factors leading to failure of the relationship.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The classic best selling book “His Needs, Her Needs” identifies men’s #1 relationship need as ... wait for it ... sexual fulfillment. So I’d call that a keystone, not just a response to deprivation. Any lady who has trouble believing this, I’d suggest you read the book.

So it’s a keystone of his needs. Not of her needs, and it’s not THE keystone of marriage.

Okay, ask the people having regular sex. Studies show they’re happier.

Anonymous wrote:The classic best selling book “His Needs, Her Needs” identifies men’s #1 relationship need as ... wait for it ... sexual fulfillment. So I’d call that a keystone, not just a response to deprivation. Any lady who has trouble believing this, I’d suggest you read the book.

So it’s a keystone of his needs. Not of her needs, and it’s not THE keystone of marriage.