Hi…. Not sure where to start but I (48M) and my wife (43F) have been on a rocky road these last few years and man is it tough. She has been battling/in denial about “minor” depression coupled with anxiety for years and has finally agreed to go to therapy. She has yet to actually make an appointment, but promises she will. We have 2 kids and what I consider a good life… decent jobs, good home, and honestly a pretty comfortable lifestyle.
We like many married couples have experienced a decline in intimacy since kids, and out libido gap has grown significantly in the last few years. We have had many talks, with me mostly initiating them as I am the high drive one. She always agrees that we can do better and makes promises that she will be more aware.
Not sure what this post is about, maybe it is just my way of venting or gaining perspective. But man I am starting to struggle more and more with being g the driving force to make things better. We have fallen into what I call the trap of routine and what is comfortable.
COVID I believe impacted my wife more than me in terms of become more of a “homebody”. We both have become what I feel a lazy, but I am trying to turn that around.
We recently got back from vacation where in my head I was hoping it would be an opportunity to increase our connection, and start to rekindle our relationship. It was a cruise (not my favorite but wife and kids like them), and kids had a separate room so in my head I had this feeling like some real privacy would make her more comfortable, and be able to just should some level of desire towards me. I guess I set my level of expectation too high. During the time leading up to the cruise I dropped several hint on how we would finally have to alone time and she seems to agree with me which only fed into my expectations.
If it is not obvious by now, things did not really change. Going into vacation we average sex 1-2 times a week, but to get to two I feel I have to be on the verges of badgering her. I feel bad about this but I find I cannot help myself. I just want to be close to her. Of the 7 nights we had sex 2 times, both I had to initiate, and the second felt like she was just doing it because I asked, I.e. she barely put in any effort.
We talked briefly about it on the ride home best we could and she apologized, and said she had hoped for more herself at least indicated she was trying. She indicated that that night we would have sex.
Fast wire are to that evening and we somehow convinced teenagers to go to bed early and we now have some quiet time. We go to bed, and her routine is to “wait until the kids are asleep” before we can be intimate. Well as I figured would she falls asleep. Well after about 20 minutes of her sleeping she wakes up and was like I am sorry let’s have sex. At this point I am like no just go to sleep your obviously tired. So she insists a little. Probably a little TMI but she takes her bottoms off and leaves her top on and tells me to get undressed. Well we have been together for 15 years and I know this means she will lazily work to get me just hard enough with some oral and then lay down and then we have sex, this is what happened the second time we had sex in vacation.
This is where my current frustration kicks in and I am not really in the mood for this. Honestly I get little satisfaction from this and i feel she when she does this it is just to check the box so when i ask to have sex again she can say we just had it X days ago. So I turned her down, and she seemed mildly angry at first but fell asleep almost immediately after getting dressed again.
The next morning she said nothing about it, I was going to leave it be, but I casually mentioned how she fell asleep rather quickly, and she said yea I know but then you turned me down, I was totally ready. I just left it as we have talked about this before and I am not getting into it.
Long post, and not even sure what I am expecting her, just frustrated I guess and hoping for the best. I will likely force a conversation about this but I just think it will be more empty promises. I honestly love my wife and I can’t imagine not being with her. But damn this getting harder and harder.