Marriage Help – Sex Frequency

27 comments

1. I think you need to keep doing what you are doing. Because when she is ready I would think she will let you know. You don’t want her to think you are only doing this for sex. I am very proud of you for realizing you went to far and working on being a better partner

2. You need to understand that sex must be enjoyed by both partners. It cannot be coerced or forced or bought with hiring a housekeeper.

   Because of whatever reason your wife does not want to be sexual with you. She may not have libido or just does not want it with you specifically. I doubt your sex life will improve unless she understands her lack of sexual desire is a problem and starts doing something about it.

3. It’s so hard when sex is how someone feels connected and to constantly get rejected. It’s hurts the soul. No, noone owes you physically intimacy but I totally understand where you are coming from when you say you are trying to earn being important to your wife again. I’m a wife too, and think regular sex makes a relationship closer, stronger, more fun, and worth it in a way, like feeling like an adult and a woman in the midst of hard times when I’m tired or worn out, it ends the day in a positive way. It sucks when both partners don’t enjoy connecting in that way and you feel like you have to convince someone. But if that’s what you have to do in your marriage, you seem to be doing good. Remember tho, the helping, appreciation, being productive and involved at home, and romancing her with dates and massages should never stop. Be someone your wife want to be vulnerable with and have fun with. Take care of her.

4. Read the book, “Come as you are” by Emily Nagoski. It’s about female sexuality and desire. Read it together. Good luck.

5. Two weeks is not enough time. You need to be able to be more thoughtful about her without her constantly praising you for doing the bare minimum of caring.

   Keep doing what you’re doing until it becomes a natural response without force or adulation. Then add a bit of romance in. Sprinkle it in without the expectation of sex. Then watch her come to you.

6. Whatever you do, don’t bring it up first. Let her come to you!

7. So, if she has Responsive desire you can wait all you want, she’s not going to initiate. It’s your “job” with this type of SO.

   Yeah, it sucks. I KNOW (from experience).

   So, here are my two cents.

   A) Bringing up sex after just 2 weeks of Pennance and Chorplay is too soon.

   B) I’d start flirting after a month or so.

   Playing chicken race with a LL person is like competing with a fish who can stay under water the longest.

   You’ll end up in deep depression and probably say some things that will hurt your relationship further.

8. > I was frustrated that the frequency wasn’t where I wanted it to be, so I acted badly and pressured her.

   Acting badly and pressuring her was an awful idea. I have read this on other posts and I can’t understand how guys think this will actually work. “If I act like a clown and put pressure on her, surely that will work and I’ll get more sex!” Communication is key, you have to be able to communicate and not be mad etc

   > In the two weeks since, I’ve taken sex off the table and we’ve talked about some areas in the relationship that she thought were lacking (I typically haven’t been very thoughtful toward her)

   So at least you have self identified your issue that you aren’t very thoughtful toward her and her feelings. It’s good that you are working towards being better about that. Even though you hired a part time housekeeper, you should still be doing things around the house to keep it clean and picked up. No one is ever ‘too busy’ to keep the house picked up. A messy cluttered house is not good for anyone’s mental health.

   Do you still ‘date your wife’?What I mean, is do you flirt with her, rub her shoulders/back when she walks past you? Do you compliment her hair/looks etc. If she’s sitting on the couch, do you sit down and rub her feet or legs? All these things help stoke the fire. Some men think their wife will just jump in the sack without any of that and are disappointed when it doesn’t happen. Be patient with your wife and make her feel wanted ALL the time and not just when you want sex.

9. Coercion is abusive. Give it as much as time as she needs. You probably don’t think what you were doing was *that* bad.

   It is. It’s a form of abuse/harassment.

   You felt entitled to something: her body. You pressured her into something she did not want or desire at the time. Sex, in her eyes, is probably now associated with stress/resentment.

   This isn’t just taking her for granted.

   This was pressuring her to have sex over and over again until a fight broke out and she thought it would actually be better and easier to leave you. That’s serious. That’s HOW bad this was getting for her.

   Y’all have 3 damn kids, one who is still quite young. She’s probably exhausted and severely touched out and yet what you wanted was more important.

   Give it time. A lot of time. Don’t do nice things for her and be more thoughtful JUST to get sex/hope this heightens her libido. That’s not being thoughtful – that’s you doing nice things to still get what you want from her which is more sex. “My plan was to keep working on our relationship until she brings up sex again.” 🤦🏼‍♀️

   Just chill dude. Damn.

10. Woo her. Date her. Spoil her. Romance her. Take her on a picnic somewhere nice. Drive her to a lookout and surprise her with a flower. Charm her and be kind to her. Treat her as if you are just still trying to get in her pants.

11. You’re finding out that what happens in the bedroom begins far outside the bedroom. Being a good and loving and supportive partner is only the beginning. Being a partner that works side by side with their spouse on chores and being a strong co-parent adds to it.

12. She probably knows that you’re still thinking about sex. And she probably knows it’s not as “off the table” as you say it is. Hence, why you’re making this post.

    I don’t mean this to be rude at all, but I’m willing to bet your wife is very intuitive. My advice is to genuinely do things out of love and absolutely nothing else. You said you’re doing that, but in order for it to work sex *actually* has to be off the table. I promise you that if you keep doing that, she will notice the small things you do and she will notice when you don’t want anything in return. That’s the start of a healthy relationship in terms of sex in my opinion.

13. Can you define “pressuring”? Because I think that’s a really important part of the story. Two weeks may not be enough time if you made her feel unsafe.

14. I was once in a position like this — running around doing chores and delivering little signs of affection in the hopes of earning enough “credits” to cash in for sex. I would not recommend it. For me it ultimately led to resentment and made our relationship worse. I was constantly in fear that I would slip up somehow — fail to do something, make an ill advised side comment that offended her — and whatever credits I had earned would be forfeited and I’d have to start all over from scratch. Believe me, you don’t want to be in a relationship like that.

    Here is probably the hardest part in addressing a problem like this: reframing your personal relationship with sex. In short, you need to get control over it. Sex is not water or oxygen. You can live without it. If sex is dominating your thoughts and life, you’re essentially an addict and your wife is your sole dealer, which gives her enormous power over you. I realize for some people this might be really challenging, if not impossible. To those people I would say, If sex really means that much to you and your present partner is not fulfilling what you consider to be essential needs, you really need to consider walking away, no matter how painful that decision and process may be.

15. Keep sex off the table for now, me and my wife have always had a good sex life but at times we could go through dry spells like once a week, what changed was one day my wife said something negative about a part of her body and started crying and that broke me because I knew I had not done enough to make her feel good about herself so I started taking her flowers to work, I left her little love notes in her purse and around the house, took her steak dinners to work for lunch and many other things, I wanted her to know just how much I love her and how beautiful I think she is, I actually turned her down for sex a few times because I did not want her to think I did anything for sex I did it because she means the world to me, our sex life exploded we had sex 13 times in a week not long after and it has been good since, much more intense than ever before and there is not a day that goes by now I don’t tell her she is beautiful, after having children most women have body issues and that does affect there sexual drive

16. Coercion is abuse. You abused your wife. Shameful. Sorry! It’s the truth.

    You’ll need to wait for her to be comfortable having sex again. That could take a long time. Weeks, months. It could never happen. She could realize that she is simply never going to be comfortable being intimate with someone who coerced her.

    Let this be a learning lesson for you and whoever else reads this. Coercion is never ok, ever. Divorce before you try to coerce your partner to have sex with you.

    No means no. She didn’t want to have sex with you and you didn’t respect her no. That’s high level bs.

17. Definitely keep doing what you’re doing. For many of us women arousal and desire starts well before any bedroom activities. I can tell you for 100% I am way more likely to initiate with my husband if he’s been helpful throughout the day. Last week he surprised me with some of my favorite snacks from the store, did a bunch of laundry and did toddler bedtime solo two nights in a row and we had sex twice in one day for the first time in years lol. He was very sexy to me those days

18. You’ve just started correcting things. The fact that your brain is still going “now? Now?! Sex now?!” Is a bad sign.

19. How often do you take her out on dates? How often do you try to romance her? How often do you try to just have fun with her, without the looming pressure of sex?

20. I’ll be honest, you seem pretty preoccupied with your own needs and only jumping through hoops with your wife to get your needs met. You caused a lot of damage to your wife. Her needs should be your top concern and while it sounds like you’ve taken steps to address her needs, you’re pretty focused on getting sex. Is sex more important than her need to feel loved, validated, and safe? And you think there should be a time limit on repairing all this? You are lucky to have her! Some serious shift in perspective is needed for you to have a healthy sex life!

21. Unfortunately I think most of the issues brought up by low libido people are red herrings, your just not going to change who they are. There may be some improvement, maybe you get sex once a week instead of once every couple months, but they aren’t going to change who they are. It’s best to internalize that fact and operate from a point where you aren’t under the illusion that chore play is going to lead to more sex.

22. If you pressured her so much that you separated, then you’re going to have to wait. If you’re helping out just for sex, then that’s a huge problem.

    Chill out.

23. I’ve been married for 25 years. I STILL have this issue with my husband. I tell him all the time that him being an active participant with chores, kids, and decision making would help so much. I have told him that physical (non-sexual) touch is a turn on for me. He just refuses to change. I have even shown him that when he does more around the house, I can relax, and therefore sex is more appealing to me. He would have sex on our bed with laundry thrown all over the bed. I CAN’T DO THAT. A cluttered house leaves me with a cluttered mind and I can’t function. So we barely have sex. I’m not withholding, I just literally can’t. It’s just not physically or mentally possible.

    Just make sure that you are listening to your wife, I mean really listening. Also do things out of kindness for her. I get that she’s a SAHM, but sometimes say hey babe, I’ll take the kids out for pizza and give them their baths when we get home, you just go and take a bath and relax. Not because you want sex but just because you really want her to have some relax time. When you do this make sure things don’t fall apart. Nothing is worse than taking a breather only to come back to double the work.

    I really wish there was a forum where we could speak about this verbally. There’s so much to say about this issue.

    You want to know that you have a partner, not just when it comes to sex.

24. I think for a lot of women, the desire to have sex starts with emotions. Keep doing what you’re doing, and be patient. It may take months. You’ve been together ten years and she has given you three kids. Give her as much time as she needs to feel comfortable again. When she’s ready, she will initiate and it will be a game changer for your marriage. Don’t just do this for the short-term to appease her. You need to make long-term changes. Make plans to take her out on a special date once a month and take the initiative to hire a sitter. Ask her out just like you would when you were courting her. Be sweet to her but don’t try to coerce sex or touch her in a sexual way. Let her know you can respect her boundaries. Make her feel safe, loved, and appreciated. This could be a huge turning point in your marriage…and I mean for the better. Also, you may want to see if she’d be interested in counseling so a third party can give you both guidance on how to move forward as a team.

    Good job on making changes so far and acknowledging what you did was wrong. That says a lot about your character as a human. Keep asking her what you can do to help her. You’re definitely on the right track, but in the grand scheme of things, two weeks is not that long. Put her emotional well-being before your need for physical touch for a while and she will appreciate it more than you know. There is no time limit on something like this, so don’t make her feel like you’re rushing her or she will sense it and pull away more.

25. Honestly when the stress of the house and other things gets relieved she will come around. All of the household chores, kids, meals, etc takes a huge toll and likely the reason she doesn’t want to have sex. She is just exhausted or doesnt want to feel “needed” all the time. Kids are after her all day and when she finally lies down and night you are there trying to get some.

    I was in a similar situation. Wife and I took major strides at decluttering which drastically helps with nightly clean up and overall feeling the house is cleaner. That honestly has helped a lot.

26. Something that most men don’t understand is that foreplay starts way before you enter the bedroom. Sometimes our love languages change as women and mothers’. Acts of service start to become our primary love language(not everyone and not in every situation) I’d say to ease your way back into sex with your wife. Keep doing what you’re doing and don’t stop just because sex isn’t happening right away.

27. I saw a comment the other day that said.

    >My therapist said that women withdraw when their emotional needs are not being met, and their husbands are often to ignorant (intentional or not) to notice this at first. When they do its because they aren’t having sex. But then their focus is on how the wife is creating distance by not having sex.

    You need to keep doing what you’re doing and don’t bring up sex. Bringing up sex will be viewed as “I only made these changes temporarily to get sex”. You need to focus on the mental and emotional intimacy of your marriage. If sex is the only way you think you can be intimate and close…you’re doing it wrong.