Why Don't You Want to Have Sex With Your Spouse?

[actiongurl]

I don't want to have sex with my husband because I feel like an object to him. I feel like I am there for him to vent his frustrations on and use to orgasm when he feels the need. I don't feel like he does much of anything to show me he loves me or that I am meaningful at all. I feel alone, misunderstood and saddened at the thought of spending the rest of my life with someone who is self absorbed.

[frozensprouts]

seems like both "sides" are pretty bent on blaming the other, which is sad

[Stillgrowing]

I haven't read any of the other responses yet, so I'm hoping people are just answering, not debating.

 

For me it's because I realized that its only about my husband. He's capable of pretending its about me,but I don't think his borderline personality disorder allows it to be at all about me. Crudely, I'm a "hole" to stick it in. When I deny it, the true colors come out. My emotional desire left with this realization. I do have sex with him bc I enjoy sex but I really don't connect with him during it at all. And frankly if he wasn't such a pain in the a$$ when he doesn't get it, I'd stop.

 

sg

[Mme. Chaucer]

In my first marriage, I stopped desiring to have sex with my husband. For a while, I "did my duty" and I felt abominable afterwards. Ultimately we stopped doing it altogether, because I refused.

 

My ex husband was lying to me every day. I had no proof, but I intuitively felt it. We were in marriage counseling, and he NEVER addressed his issues and the (very important and serious) things he was lying about, though I would try to guide the sessions that way. Instead, the counseling became focussed on how I was rejecting my husband sexually, AND about how my lack of trust in him was hurtful.

 

Of course, this made it more difficult (repugnant even) for me to be sexual with him.

 

And he became more insistent and angry. His rage behaviors made me less and less attracted to him, and the fact that he sometimes directed his rages at our teenaged daughter put the nail in the coffin.

 

He also began and swiftly escalated in controlling behaviors such as following me, reading my journals or emails, etc. No, I was not ever having an affair or even questionable contacts with any men. Yes, some of my issues with my marriage were written about in my journals. For myself, privately. Which enraged him even further when he read them, and which caused me to stop journal writing - and which I still feel as a loss, since I'd been doing it almost daily since I was 12 through my 40's.

 

But … through all of this, I still felt that I loved him. I truly wanted to go back to the way we were, sexually AND INTIMATELY. I mean, to the place where I KNEW I could count on him and that he was not misrepresenting himself and his actions to me.

 

Ultimately, the shyte hit the fan; all of his lying and betrayals were exposed, we never got back to the way we once were and of course, we never had sex again.

 

For me, my sexuality MUST have a place of trust and safety in order to exist within the context of a love relationship. If we were talking about a drunken tryst, this would not be the case, but in a marriage, where you let yourself be vulnerable and revealed, it is very much so. If I seriously withdraw emotionally from a person, my sexuality is going right along with it.

[frozensprouts]

With the ex, the times I didn't want to have sex with him was when I didn't feel particularly loving toward him.

 

There. No blame. A simple explanation.

 

and there you have it summed up quite well...

 

many guys ( and women) say they want their spouse to want to have sex with them, and I can totally understand that...everyone needs to feel wanted...but sexual desire doesn't usually exist in a vacuum...if a woman ( or a man too) is unhappy and feeling unloved, sad, hurt,angry etc. it's kind of hard to want to have sex with the person who is making you feel that way

 

in some situations, it seems that there is much more going on than that...there may be medical issues, hormonal issues, etc. which is a different story...

[Steen719]

My XH and I were very sexually compatible when married and actually still pretty good when he had his first affair 8 years in. It really was never the same and honestly, mostly because of what it did to my self-esteem. I am the first to admit that I should have put the work into the reconciliation process, but I let it go by too quickly in an effort to get things back to "normal". So, I never felt the same about myself and since I thought things were good before it happened, I felt that my "good" wasn't good enough.

 

Work, being tired, total hysterectomy which induced menopause (I might add here that it was from gift of genital warts), all made it harder to feel like it. I did enjoy it once engaged, but I can't accept someone talking down to me or being mean and then wanting sex that same night without even acknowledging what was said. Additionally, and this is a big one - even though it seems small to others, maybe, but I would always tell him to come to bed with me and then get up and go watch tv if he wanted since I had to get up early and he did not. He would do that once in a blue moon, but generally would try to wake me up at 3am and I resented it. I was ok with him coming to bed and going on and getting up. Idk - then he got sick and I tried anytime he wanted, but that was an issue.

 

I may be in a minority here (?), but since it what we think, I will just say it. I don't think women find it as important as men do. I liked it, have always liked sex, but I wanted the other things to be with it - love, respect, etc. I also wanted to sometimes have something else prelude the occasion, some together time, but usually that did not happen. I think he was OK with just the sex and don't get me wrong. Sometimes, the hard, fast sex was great, but sometimes, I could not separate the anger, negativity and grumbling about freaking everything from the desire to make love. Give and take. He was not all wrong or all right and neither was I. After menopause, it was really different. I couldn't take hormones because my mother and three of her sisters had breast cancer. During his really selfish, stupid times, he actually told me that many women would be willing to take hormones so that they would want sex more. Yeah, well, that kind of talk is bound to make me want you and he is an XH now.

 

Good question, makes me feel a little sad, though. It seems like so many people have these issues.

[VeveCakes]

To answer the second question; because women need emotional arousal whereas a man could hate you at that moment but if you take your clothes off and say "do me", they will.

 

We are wired differently for sex. It's a scientific fact.

[carhill]

To answer the second question; because women need emotional arousal whereas a man could hate you at that moment but if you take your clothes off and say "do me", they will.

 

We are wired differently for sex. It's a scientific fact.

I would generally agree, but my prior posted anecdote in this thread underscores personal outlier behavior, in that the same nude lady presented herself but the undertones of the marriage caused me to feel it was 'wrong'. That would fly in the face of men being willing to and desirous of banging someone they 'hate'. We're all different.

[VeveCakes]

I agree... situational scenarios can change the outcome for sure. I would say men are better at shoving their feelings aside for sex than women are. We are not good at it all, although I wish I could be.

[Mme. Chaucer]

If my ex husband thought that I was living a lie in our marriage, I am quite sure that he would still want to have sex with me if he felt horny. I hate to generalize, but I think that men are naturally more inclined to compartmentalize their sexuality than women are. In fact, men seem to compartmentalize more all around IN GENERAL.

Edited November 22, 2012 by a LoveShack.org Moderator

[Nyla]

I am the unusual woman who can compartmentalize sex.

 

Even if I am angry with my husband, I can't help but want to be intimate with him in bed.

 

I find that lovemaking helps with the anger as well.

 

There was an ex that I never wanted to be intimate with. I felt emotionally abused and controlled. He also liked to push me into sexual things I didn't want to do and he was UGLY. I was only with him because I was naive.

[belkin2]

I don't 'not want to' as such, I am, or have been, less enthusiastic than he is. I have never had a high sex-drive, even when younger. That is just me. It's not wrong, it doesn't mean I'm broken and need fixing, it's just the way I was was made. H has a higher drive. We compromise. In the lean times if was probably once a week, sometimes more. Now we are both connecting again after his affair, it's more like 4 times a week. And the more we do it, the better I feel about it.

 

Over the years my less than high sex drive took a battering from tiredness, babies and in the last decade or so PND and then normal depression and the meds to treat it. And the menopause came along to join the party . So I wanted it less and less, H was getting more and more fed up. We still DTD but I guess he realised I wasn't all that enthusiastic and didn't enjoy it much as a result.

 

H drew away from me and I felt unloved and unlovable. I have been unbeleivable lonely in my marriage and was convinced this was it for the rest of our lives. We had both, I think, accepted that couple love was no longer going to be a major part of our lives. We had our children and our friends and that would have to be it. I don't think either of us knew how to fix this.

 

When he had his affair it was primarily an EA. Which seemed ironic to me. Surely if he was missing out on hot sex it would be that be wanted. But I have come to understand something I never really did before, sex for H is about being and feeling loved. It is the main way he expresses and receives love. Sex for me is an add-on - a bit of recreation that I can take or leave and if I am not getting love in other ways from H i can most definitely leave it thanks very much! So he was getting love from somewhere else even though what he was giving the OW was what I had been craving for years, emotional intimacy and tenderness, and what would have enabled me to give H what he wanted too! Total lack of communication. An utterly absurd situation.

 

We are fixing this. It is getting better.

 

Hope that helps a little FS.

 

 

Sounds a lot like the dynamics between my wife and I and what goes on under our roof. Minus the getting our sexual intimacy back to anything normal or healthy to this point.

[belkin2]

I have only recently found myself not wanting sex with my wife. Its not really that cut and dry though. I desire sexual intimacy and would love to have a healthy sex life with her. But I don't want to engage in obligatory sex and the way things go when we try leaves me feeling it isn't worth it. So for now any way I am not initiating. We are in MC and I think this elephant is finely going to really start being addressed in the coming sessions. We will see where it goes, but we are in the classic 'which comes first, the chicken or the egg' stand off. We are both lonely and unfulfilled in the marriage. If I am the chicken I need love reinforced by passion, desire and sexual intimacy. She being the egg needs the emotional and intellectual connections and support to feel loved and to have any desire for a physical relationship. I am not laying eggs and she is not hatching chickens.

There are a lot of factors and years of issues clouding it all. The sexual intimacy I so desperately desire that should be the unique glue to our relationship that is ours and only ours just serves to push us apart.

[belkin2]

 

Seems that a lot of the message that western culture puts out there about sex is that it's an "extra" or just something that one does because they enjoy it and for no other reason...you don't hear so much about it being an expression of caring, commitment , bonding and love. That's really sad, as it can be one of the ultimate ways to bond with another human being.

 

 

This really hits home with me as it is exactly how I feel. Sexual intimacy is how I title the complete package of sex and a physical relationship including things like affection, casual contact, flirting, cuddling for a movie or at bed time and of course love making.

I wouldn't say that my wife would disagree with these ideas, but we have not been able to get any deeper than sharing some casual affection towards each other.

[hardtouse]

Our sex lif took a beating after our daughter was born. Most nights, husband was in bed at least 30 minutes to an hour before I was, as he offered me very little help with the child care. Then, on nights when I managed to get to bed early, he would come in, wake me up, and have sex leaving me feeling unfullfilled and used.

 

Over time, it became frustrating as he would only want sex on his terms and his times, and if it took me awhile to get into it, he would get upset and just finish. Again, I felt used. On the occasion when I initiated sex, he would be OK with it.

 

My husband does not like physical touch, except as sex. He hates to hold hands or hug. We haven't kissed each other since 2005.

 

We also have disparate work ethics, both at work and at home, which leads to frustration as we own a business.

 

I've had discussions with him that we needed to work on communicating with each other, and indicated that I had worked on everything I could; that he needed to see what I was saying and address the issues. That was two years ago and he hasn't addressed the issue yet. We haven't had sex in two years, and have discussed nothing about it.

 

I've given up.

[Spark1111]

I love to have sex with my H, a lot! The times I have not felt like it was when his approach was too direct, or too crudely phrased, and it turned me off and I told him so.

 

If the average man takes 7 minutes, start to finish, and the average woman takes 21 minutes, what do we do with those other 14?

 

Sex counsel ours have couples start with a diagram of the body and you draw on it where and how you like to be touched.

 

Our diagrams would be very different if given free rein tour most selfish desires!

 

So we compromise....most of the time.

 

Yet, if I were just to do what he wanted every time, I would grow very! Very bored.

 

and if I feel cherished, I desire him all the more, given I get my 14 minutes first!

[cocorico]

The only time I do not want to have sex with my partner is when we've already made love several times that day and we need to finish making the dinner before the guests arrive. But I'll always offer a raincheck for later.

[ej427]

With my first husband, he always made it feel like it was a duty of mine, like a chore. Don't get me wrong, he was a GREAT lover, but there wasn't any emotional connection in the bedroom. He also cheated on me. Although I never mentioned it to him...it was always popping into my head during. After I forgave him for cheating, I never felt good about myself. It made me feel flawed and defective. He would also, make jokes about my appearance for fun. It wasn't meant to be mean, just a part of his personality. He always told me that he's just kidding and doesn't mean any of it, but unfortunately for him, it affected my performance and sex drive. Again, I never told him this. I knew that once a week I would have to do my wifely duties and would feel sick to my stomach anticipating it. In the end, I had started imagining him as someone else to get me through it. When I say "imagining someone else", I mean that it wasn't another person, but him just not his personality. I would pretend that it was him from the first month we were together when he made me feel like I was his everything. But adventually, I couldn't fake it anymore and our sex life was almost nonexistence.

After many years together I left him and remarried. My sex life with my current husband is the opposite. He is not a very good lover, but for some reason I am always wanting it from him and I'll tell you why. He made me feel like I'm the only woman in the world. That's a HUGE turn on for me. He was always making me feel sexy and never pushed for me to give it to him. Always complimenting me. Even if he didn't compliment me, it wouldn't matter much because his actions meant more.

 

My first husband told he loved me all the time, but I never felt it. My second husband told me only half as much, but showed me love all the time. For example, I we were out in public and an attractive woman walked by, my husband would not take his eyes off of me. If I were somewhere with my first husband, his eyes would've wondered to the attractive woman and I would be invisible to me. I (and probably all other women) will always notice where my mans eyes are focused in that situation. I never made a big deal about it. I choose my battles and that one is just silly. But, it did affect my performance because it would make me feel not sexy.

 

Because my current husband makes me feel sexy and I am always wanting to make him feel like a man by giving him sex all the time, daily if he wanted it. Also, I am willing to do anything he wants sexually...anything. The real reason is how I feel about myself. There you go. That's my feedback

[iris219]

seems like both "sides" are pretty bent on blaming the other, which is sad

 

I've never been married, but I was in a LTR relationship with a man who I lived with for 4 years, and we had intended to be married.

 

I stopped wanting sex towards the end, and it wasn't because of his behavior. I would never blame him for my lack of desire for him (I did have sexual desire, just not for him.) He was a great guy: supportive, loving, accepting, faithful.

 

I changed. I become a different person; we met when I was 22. The person I was at 26 wouldn't have chosen to be in relationship with him because I was so different.

 

We were very, very close, almost too close. I felt like I couldn't tell where he stopped and where I began. I felt like I had lost myself, like I had no identity without him. He was very affectionate, always touching me. He wanted to always be with me. I had no time alone. I rarely went to the grocery store alone. He couldn't stand if we did things separately. We were connected at the hip, and while I accepted that at 22, by 26 I needed to become my own person. (Now I feel like I'm starting to blame him, but I'm really not. I changed; he didn't.)It got to the point where I needed space and I recoiled from being touched.

 

I also felt like he was my brother in many ways (still do. I consider him family and love him as such). I considered him physically attractive, but all these other factors made sex with him repulsive to me. I constantly felt guilty about this about because it wasn't his fault and I couldn't figure out a way to make it better, so I eventually left.

 

Sometimes I wonder if we should have tried counseling. I still wonder if we could have worked through the issues.

[Ladydrib]

I'm not interested in sex with my husband because I don't feel an emotional connection and while I love him and care for him deeply, I don't feel that I'm in love with him. he's fully aware of this and we have worked for a long time to try to fix it. I believe now that it will never change. And so we have to decide, is that good enough for us or do we need to divorce. He thinks it's good enough. I don't. It's a terrible situation.

[lulee]

dont get me wrong sex is important and all, and i absolutely love my husband to pieces he is so wonderful he makes me feel loved and all those gushy feelings and i can't be any more happier than i am in my relationship BUT sometimes i just simply don't feel like it.

 

It isn't always about what is missing sometimes you just don't feel like it its nothing about that person or myself its simply i just don't feel like having sex, it doesn't mean i love him any less or that he makes me feel any less its just sometimes i kinda just want to be with his company not involving sex. There is no fancy reason behind this, there truly is no fancy big dictionary or scientific response.

 

I love him he is amazing and my eyes only turn to him and no one else.

[Jippy]

I have lost the desire because he's such a miserable person. Constantly moody, and generally hates the world. The few time we do ML technically its amazing, but emotionally its dead. I don't like him anymore.

[Summer Breeze]

Two things.

 

1 - as a young wife I used sex to punish my H with---no, not THAT kind of punishing! I don't really know why other than that was my instinct at the time. He had some issues and I didn't know how to support him. I took them personally because of my ignorance and somehow decided that sex would be what I'd use for punishing. In hindsight he might have preferred some real punishment....................

 

2 - 7 minutes for him and 21 for her? Really?

[cayman]

(first time posting)

For me...It started soon after we got married. My desire went down until a little over a year ago when I pretty much stopped having sex with him at all.

 

I have just started counseling but I think that a lot of it is that I feel less independent, tied down, suffocated, monitored, etc. I feel like I have no freedom which I knew would happen when we got married but I guess I didn't realize it would be this hard. I am there for him emotionally, for the most part, but I am very angry because he is always around and I get tired of being his mother. He instantly gets upset when I indicate I am not in the mood but I hate being asked! He seems to have no sense of subtlety and no real passion for me at all. It makes me feel like a piece of meat, especially when he claims that I "tease" him by stripping down for bed or the shower. I get angry at things like that and at feeling like I am required to have sex with him as part of being married. I don't do requirements.

 

Lately I have been reading "paranormal romance" which is NOT in my character and I feel horrible because all I want to do is hurt him for holding on too tightly. If he were ignoring me, I would probably feel differently but I just can't get any time to myself (he is working on a grad degree online) and can't STAND when he tries to "caress" me because I know he wants it to go somewhere more than anything and it angers me. Maybe through counseling, I can work it out, but right now all I want is to be alone again. He is my best friend but I seriously want to kick him out.

[ShinyNewKid]

I ordinarily have a high sex drive, but my wife weaponized sex for years. I get it if I've been "good" I guess. That and her progression into an angry nag. Hardly 2 hours go by where I don't hear some sort of put-down. It doesn't matter how considerate I am with her, I finally realized that it's really got nothingbto do with me as a person. She just made the choice to treat me like this because she gets something out of it.

 

So lately, not only do I not want to have sex with her, but I can't stand even holding her hand, hugging her, or kissing her.

 

I just accepted a job that starts in January. It takes me out of town Monday thru Friday and I can't wait. I hate to be away from my teenage son, but once he's out of the house, so will I be.