Men who stopped being intimate with their partner during the relationship, what was your reasoning?

30 comments

1. Too many nights of trying to set up a sexy evening from a nice dinner to flirty touching talking then being rejected.
   Not trying is better than thinking we may have a passionate night together only to find out she’d rather stay up late watching tv.
   Back to masturbating like a teen again.

2. she got boring in bed and I genuinely got more entertainment out of jerking off

3. she didn’t want to be with me any longer

4. loved being rejected while married. Also loved being beaten and kicked while sleeping because she dreamed I was cheating on her. Last two years of marriage, mostly slept on the floor or couch downstairs. Should I talk about the chore chart and the gold stars?

   Good riddance.

5. She no longer wanted to be physically intimate with me much (to at all). After a while, the feeling became mutual. Now to the point we are both a lot more like room mates and I interact minimally with her. When we’re both in the house most of the time we’re in different rooms.

   Part of how it got to this point, besides generally growing apart over the decades with different interests and priorities, was both of us giving less of what the other wanted: for me, touch and sex; for her me being in the area as her and also listening to her talk.

6. Dead fish aren’t any fun. A woman who just lies there and expects you to pleasure her without making any effort to reciprocate isn’t someone I’m gonna keep trying to be with.

7. She never initiated. She constantly rejected any advances. She would only have sex at night, in the bedroom, only when her daughter wasn’t there. She would only do missionary or doggy, two positions that do absolutely nothing for me. And if i didn’t cum, oh well, she wasn’t going to do anything about it. Her being on top was out of the question and she wouldn’t do oral.

   Constantly being rejected and having to finish myself off got old. She made it perfectly clear that wasn’t going to change.

8. She rarely initiated so I lost motivation to keep trying

   She put on a bunch of weight

   She got a dog against my wishes so intimate time absolutely became impossible at that point

   From a mental and physical perspective, my attraction to her wained

   Edit: and she didn’t return the favor

9. She was abusive to me. Physically, verbally, mentally. She would explode at me at any given moment over any little thing (like locking the back door when she didn’t want it locked, or if I dressed our infant in an outfit she didn’t like) at any unexpecting moment. I was walking on eggshells at all times.

   I no longer viewed her as a point of comfort and love. I didn’t want to touch her. The thought of having sex with her made me feel ill. She would try to initiate intimacy and I would always reject.

   She blames me for the down fall of us because I stopped being intimate, but she would never admit to the reasons behind why I stopped being intimate, she refused to admit to or change her ways.

10. If you mean having sex, then it is mostly because we’re tired. My wife is a Peds ER doc, I have full time job + community positions, and, most importantly, we have a toddler that is high energy and and a bad sleeper.

    We still have sex and we have it enough for both of us. Maybe once a week. Otherwise, between all the things going on and my wife’s constantly changing schedule, we’re just tired.

    But, if you mean intimate more broadly, then we haven’t stopped. We go on dates frequently (mostly lunch dates), and spend a lot of time cuddling and stuff.

11. I realized I was giving more effort than I was getting. I would get her off in multiple ways, while she was a one trick pony and wouldn’t try to get any better or learn something new. That combined with her “test” when we first got together to make sure I could get her off mad for a real shitstorm of resentment. Yes, I tried talking to her about it but that only made it worse because after that she wouldn’t even bother.

12. She didn’t want to anymore. Whenever I tried to initiate, she would reject me, for months. I tried to talk to her about what I could do differently, what would help her relax/ get in the mood/ if there’s any unfulfilled desires /if it helped if I worked out (even though my stature hadn’t changed during our relationship), etc. but couldn’t get anywhere with talking. She just said she needed some time. After 6 months I stopped trying, because being in a sexless relationship and getting rejected over and over is exhausting mentally, physically and bad for your self esteem. She eventually came around when she noticed I didn’t initiate anymore, but the relationship was broken beyond repair by that time.

13. A lot of women hold the attitude that men are the ones who initiate and women are the ones who accept or reject. That attitude never changes when you’re past the dating stage and well into a relationship. It gets tiring never having anyone actively want you. Especially your long term partner, and especially after you’ve come out and asked her directly to initiate more and she agreed but never changed anything.

14. The only times I stopped being intimate with girlfriends was because we just weren’t compatible and I was planning the softest breakup I could give her.

    I’ve never stopped being intimate while married to my wife. But we’ve only been married 11 years, and we’re both in our late 30’s so our libidos are still really high. Also, we don’t have kids, so it’s really easy to just make love whenever we have free time together.

15. She pulled the ol bait and switch. In the beginning we had the most amazing intimate, nasty, filthy sex of my life multiple times a day. I felt so confident in myself, loved and secure in our relationship. She initiated daily, talked dirty, multiple positions, seemed to love all my kinks and was super adventurous and involved. I’ve never experienced so much sexual energy or desire from a woman and my level of personal happiness and security in a relationship had never been higher.

    Fast forward three years- I proposed and we moved in together. She slowly stopped initiating, then started rejecting, then started what I call her “no list” no blowjobs, no going down on her, no cumming on her or in her, no sex unless it’s at night, no sex unless it’s in a bed, exc. Sex dropped from 3 times a day, to daily, to weekly, to monthly at best. We had many talks about our sex life and she would sometimes revert to the way she was in the beginning for a day or two then quit again. She changed birth control at my request, changed antidepressants. Nothing changed. She would always revert on vacations so I started to think it was stress related and start trying to pick up the slack more on chores, started grocery shopping, cooking dinner every night and doing 100% of our laundry. Finally I ultimatum her that we go to couples sex therapy or I’m out. She agrees then flat out lies to the therapist about our sex life and is super minimal effort when it comes to the therapy. She eventually admits in therapy that sex is not a priority for her at all or something she enjoys and she just did it in the beginning to “get me to like her”.

    Hearing her say that I actually felt all my attraction and intimacy for her leave my body. We continued to attempt to pick up the pieces for another year or so but it was like my dick had left the chat, I couldn’t get hard in her presence to save my life even with viagra.

    Found out after we broke up she cheated on me twice during the time she was denying sex with an underage coworker half our age.

    I wish this story had a happy “I’m doing so much better now” ending but it’s not. I’m lonely af and still think about her (the her in the beginning) years and multiple girlfriends later. It fucks with me to my core and I now have intimacy and trust issues. Life sucks, people suck. Fuck that girl for wasting years of my life on a fake ass charade.

16. Was with my ex for 14 years, we more or less didn’t have sex the last 4 years. I don’t ever recall her telling me no, but she was never enthusiastic about it nor initiated it, and I don’t want to feel like her having sex with me was a chore. It took the fun out of it for me, and I’d just rather go without than deal with that. She also put on a lot of weight, starting getting botox and made her face look all weird; the physical attraction just wasn’t there anymore. To top it off, she wasn’t all that nice and I started to resent her. I wanted nothing to do with her sexually, I just wanted to stick it out so we could raise our child together.

17. I got older, and I failed to keep myself in shape. Just didn’t have the energy younger-me had.

18. When my ex stopped wanting sex. If you say no long enough, a man will stop asking.

19. I got tired, exhausted, stressed. I became pretty unhappy altogether.

    Then she started making comments about it. Her saying the shit she said turned me off more. Nowadays, I’m barely ever horny. I’m even kind of afraid of having any sexual interactions because I feel rusty since I left her.

20. Because at times my partner has betrayed my trust. She’s told me she hates me, has thrown things at me, has hit me, and can have an unpredictable temper. She told me she wanted a divorce a few times when she got really mad (which of course was during finals in my grad school program).

    Recently she’s been doing much better, particularly over the past few months, and overall she’s less emotionally abusive and unstable in recent years after lots of feedback and work, but I still can’t completely trust her.

    I know she wants sex in part because she wants kids, and I’m not completely comfortable with that. I also want kids, but with her? How will she treat me during pregnancy and parenthood? Sometimes I avoid sex because I don’t want to find out.

21. An ex of mine stopped showering when covid lockdowns began. She said she had no reason to shower since she didn’t have to go into the office. I found it absolutely disgusting.

22. She said no. She then said no for 15 more years. Divorce came through the other month.

23. Severe depression. I go through some pretty bad depressive phases. I think at one point, we went about 4-6 months without sex. She’s the best though. There was no pushing. She just supported me and made sure I was safe.

24. As a woman whose bf is constantly rejecting me for sex, I’m eager to read some of these replies.

25. I was addicted to porn, which turned into ED, which spiraled my low self esteem even further down the toilet. Couldn’t even get it up for my fucking smoke show of a girlfriend. (Not even a fire at a tire shop compares)

    Doing much much better now.

26. A few years into my first marriage I eventually noticed that I was the only one initiating any intimacy or affection (hugs, kisses, touching, etc.), so I made a point to stop initiating one day to see how long it would take her to either initiate herself or say something. Over six weeks of nothing she finally asked if something was wrong.

    Edit: Thanks for the awards!

27. i thought we wanted kids but apparently she didn’t. After that I felt a little guilty about any unprotected sex, like i was doing something wrong trying to sneak in a baby or something. I decided I’d wait until she initiated and she never did. RIP relationship.

    My advice? It was probably a dead relationship already I just took a couple more years to figure that out.

28. When we first got married she was insatiable. Wild sex 3-4x a day every day. Over the years, things changed in a weird way. She wouldn’t even say no, she would just say some nonsensical bullshit that I assumed I was supposed to interpret as a no.

    As an example, one time, she said “I feel like a pile of sand” as a reply to me trying to initiate. Lol, what the fuck does that even mean? But I took it as a no, because anything other than an explicit yes is a no. There are a bunch of other examples of her doing similar stuff.

    I talked to her about it and told her that I would really appreciate it if she could just be honest with me and just say “no” if she wasn’t feeling it. She promised she would, but she never did. Just kept making nonsense excuses and refusing to elaborate, then going to sleep.

    There was a lot of other stuff that caused my attraction to her to dissipate, but that was the beginning of the end. After a while , I stopped initiating and started sleeping in another room because I couldn’t fall asleep next to her, and that made her *really* mad.

    Oh yeah, and it turns out she had been cheating on me with a coworker for an unknown amount of time, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the time lined up with when she started rejecting me constantly.

29. For me there was a long path to the death spiral.

    After we were together for a short time, sex became my responsibility in the relationship. It was my job to initiate, or know not to initiate. It was my job to learn what she wanted, and do it until she came multiple times. It was my job to let her sleep afterwards and lie beside her, but not accidentally let my body touch against hers.

    If I initiated at a time when she wasn’t in the mood, I was made to feel like I was molesting her. But if I didn’t initiate when she was in the mood, I was told I was hopeless and didn’t understand women. I was shamed for getting it wrong every time.

    When I did get it right, she never reciprocated, not once, not ever. I’d spend nearly an hour between foreplay and multiple rounds of oral to get her off repeatedly and afterwards she would roll over and go to sleep. If I left her there (which I didn’t like to do) she would act upset and abandoned the next day. So I had to lie beside her, not making any contact with her body, and just wait until I fell asleep.

    After a long time of this (2-3 years)I started to get upset after sex at how cold and lonely it was. Of course she didn’t know I was upset because she was asleep. I really felt like I didn’t get anything from it and I didn’t know why I ever did it or initiated. I tried talking to her about it but she wouldn’t ever listen. I don’t know why I stayed but I did. Then suddenly one day a switch flipped, and I was broken. This was 3 months before we got married.

    We didn’t have sex again until our wedding night and I really didn’t want to do it then. I remember saying I needed a shower first, and standing in the shower trying to hold in tears and make myself hard at the same time. We didn’t have sex at all for nearly our first year of marriage. This made her angry, so she got passive aggressive with me and would shut me out and set out to demean me until we would have sex. We started having sex again, about once every 3 months but I hated it.

    Somehow we had our first child, and our relationship became very bad after that – I was no longer needed. We might have had sex 4 times in the four years between our first and second and I hated myself afterwards each time. She wanted a second and I just wasn’t able to let my body touch hers. I posted about our last time having sex many years ago when I first started using Reddit, it was horrible.

    Our relationship ended (for many reasons) many years ago, I’ve never really been able to shake the negative feelings that I now associate with sex, and although I feel desire, I never feel good about it.

30. Abusive. I told her once, when she was raising hell about why I haven’t touched her in a week, that “Why I would want to have sex with the same person that stresses me the fuck out and doesn’t do shit but give me headaches.”
    Anytime she wanted to know what she was doing wrong, it always devolved into her trying to justify and twist it back onto me. I wasted literal hours listening to her trying to convince me why she shouldn’t be held to the standard she expects of other people or why the fucked things she did weren’t all that bad or her fault.
    If that didn’t work, she became angry and lashed out violently. When that failed, and/or when I verbally cornered her with evidence, she broke down and would threaten suicide.
    Repeat the cycle for as long as it took for me to just give up and then she’d want sex. I’d do just enough to get by and then she would try and make me apologize for “being abusive.”
    It was the most fucked up and twisted marriage ever. It’s been 5 yrs after we split and I don’t think I’ll ever be the same guy after that.