[athanasius1812]

Edit: Sorry, didn't catch the typo in the title until after it posted.

I am a 38yo man, married to my wife for 14 years. I love her very much, but we are in trouble and I don't know how to recover. I am attractive, take care of myself, don't drink etc. I work at a coffee shop right now, we owned a business up to 3 years ago that absorbed ridiculous amounts of time (60-100 hours a week), but we sold it and retired (moved to Hawaii).

It is about sex, of course, but it isn't about the act. She is not interested, has not initiated anything in probably the last 6 years or so. We may have sex once during any given month, never more and sometimes as much as 2 or 3 months go by. She rarely says she loves me, and never initiates so much as a kiss goodnight. We no longer sleep in the same room.

I have read the pop-psych advice columns about helping around the house, being more considerate, showing my feelings for her, and so on. A lot of it is good advice in general, I do love her and want her to feel loved so I do these things but I am reaching a point where it is actually painful to do them. How many times do you surprise with dinner, or initiate a kiss, or send her out with her friends before her total lack of response makes the rejection too painful to take?

With sex specifically I can: 1) Do nothing, initiate nothing, and feel completely unfulfilled. 2) Hint, suggest, set up romantic scenarios, and have her pretend not to have "understood". 3) When I have finally reached a breaking point, ask her in so many words only to have her reject me (painful) or much, much worse say "Let's just do it or you will be growly about it.". I have no desire to have her "relieve me", I want to be desired not endured.

Sure, on any given evening (or even many evenings) her not being particularly loving or being in the mood for sex doesn't mean much. But this has been years, and the steady stream of small (and large) rejections have become so painful to me that now I can only rarely bring myself to even put myself forward. That she is still 99% likely to reject me only compounds the pain when I finally do. I am reaching a point now where I often find myself avoiding her altogether.

We have 4 beautiful children, who I love more than life. How do I continue? How do I move forward? What can I do? I have spoken to her about this, her reaction is usually to get angry and begin pointing out every shortcoming I have currently or have ever had. If I don't immediately back down, she turns passive aggressive and starts with "OK, since you want a divorce and don't love me I will give you what you want and leave." or some variation.

Guys tend to give me the "pack up and go" advice, but I would like to find something that allows us to be together. I DO love her, and I want to be with her, but how? I'm hoping some female perspectives will help.

[monK]

This may not be an issue of what is wrong with you but with her. Perhaps she feels insecure about herself in many areas. I don't know how old your wife is, but women change sexually as they age. Perhaps you can talk again about the issue, at a time where everything is sort of calm. Tell her that you love her very much and would like to have a conversation where nobody gets angry or walks away. Explain your need to be desired. Tell her that you don't want a divorce. You want for both of you to be happy. But first ask her, "Do you still love me?" If she can answer that with an affirmative, this may remind her that she does care about you and your feelings. And by the way, doing those nice things for her should not be only to initiate a loving or sexual reaction out of her. You should do those things more than once in a while because you love her. I hope that this helps.

[oxy-moron]

Hi
this is a common thread on this site- it may pay to do some searching.
I am a man by the way.
There are man who say they have not had sex for a year or more.
To start with go to a site associated with cupids poison arrow and ( Reuniting)
and have a read. It will give you what I beleive is a common reason that relationships break down.
What I have found is that there is a hormone called Oxytocin that surges in the early romantic part of a relationship(Lots of articles about it in the web)
It makes men better communicators and women more interested in sex.
It is the hormone associated with bonding and relationships. It dies back after a while and interest in the partner dies back.
Women get raised levels of the hormone from bonding with each other.It is associated with lowering stress levels as well.
I found from research that scientists had done a lot of research which included raising Oxytocin through massage.
I decided to give manipulating Oxytocin through massage and generous touch.
What I found was that after a few months she started becoming a lot more interested in Sex. She initiates now. I have included massage as the main part of foreplay as well. Is suspect that if I stopped the touch and massage It would go back to how it was but I am not willing to try. I have noticed that the massager also gets high levels of Oxytocin as well. It makes you feel unusually happy and connected.

Give it a try- remember the massage is not to get sex so make it on safe parts of the body.

[rcoreyus]

Athanasius1812: your situation in many ways closely parallels mine (other than that we don't have kids). I also have tried everything I can think of and my wife just doesn't want sex. I've been married 25 years now and have not found a solution.

I started to post more on my situation here, but didn't want to derail this thread, so I'll post another. After all my effort, my choices are down to:

1. Live like a monk
2. Cheat
3. Leave

I've chosen 1, but i deeply resent needing to do this.

[WildChild]

I tend to have very mixed feelings about these situations. We get so many of them from both genders. I've
personally dealt with several incarnations of this over the years. In my natural state, I'm a very horny woman, very connection and sexually driven. I've had men completely shut me down through neglect, mistreatment and completely awful sexual technique, generally in some combination.

I recognize that there are women and men who for some reason are essentially asexual and really have no interest. I doubt that this is natural but may go so far back and so deep that it might as well be. Some of it is social and family training; women who see sex as a means to lure a man into commitment and once they have the ring and his signature on the dotted line, they see no reason to continue sexual activity and men who view a wife as a guarantee of sexual access with little regard for her feelings, needs or arousal. Then there are couples who start off well and get caught up in what they think life is about - acquiring material goods; they work long hours, have obligatory social connections, get lost in media and they lose the connection and attraction between them.

In other cases they may just grow in different directions. They came together at one point in their mutual developments with things to share and ways learn and grow with each other and mistook this moment in time for something that should be for all there time in this life cycle. In still other circumstances there may be physical problems, hormones out of balance or other issues that have been ignored or undiscovered or mistreated. It may be prescription drugs killing their libido, stress, emotional issues, or old baggage. There are so many possibilities, we get one aspect of one of the people in the situations perspective. Sometimes the probable problem is pretty obvious with just that little glimpse, other times is almost impossible to tell what might be going on.

I think it is always a good idea to start with both people taking a good look at the health end of the picture. If they have insurance and access to health care then both should get a full physical, take a hard look at any meds in picture, how those might interact, and what side effects they have. Weight, energy levels and general health are important. General attitude is also a factor, someone who nit picks, is negative, critical, demanding, whiny - all these things can affect desire. I could go on and on, there are so many factors.

This thread, you are young, you are retired, you have 4 children, you've had a some years of probably high stress working long hours with a lot of responsibility. My guess is that during that time, which would also likely be when the babies were being born and all the home stress of raising young children was highest, an emotional disconnection developed. That won't be cured overnight. There were probably things said, done, not said, not done, that contributed or were warnings and not addressed then.

Helping out in the home is important, especially with so many children but Oxy's advice may be the most important. Non sexual touch and connection. No expectations of sex. Men do this all the time and don't even realize it, they will get in the habit of Only touching when they want sex, of only speaking loving words when they want sex. Or they will try to "fix" the woman by being more attentive but there is still a very obvious (to the woman at least) feeling of exactly that. Touch, touch, sweet nothings, inquiring look or attitude, " are you fixed yet?" Try something else.
Women aren't cars.
Spark plugs weren't the problem, better test the ignition wires.
Crank it.
That didn't do it either, better test the coil.
Crank it.
I know I'll replace the battery leads.

tinker, tinker, check
tinker, check
tinker, check

Maybe it isn't fully conscious on either side, but she knows what you are doing. She may find it amusing at some level, or annoying but her perception isn't that this is because you love her but because you want something and she has a pretty good idea that once you get it you will go right back to generally ignoring her until you want sex.

Sexually women aren't like cars, put in fuel, turn the key and start.

Cats and dogs might be a better analogy. Women are more like cats. Unlike a dog, who once trained, will come when you call and perform various commands, although a woman may be this way in other areas, sexually, she needs to want to come to you, to be petted and indulged a bit. You want her rubbing up against your your legs so to speak and you can't "make" that happen, you have to create an environment that will encourage it. That means non sexual touch, loving words without expectation, shared experience and learning how to pleasure her. Cats don't play like dogs, they don't fetch. It doesn't matter how many times you throw a stick, praise or give a command, they are still a cat. You have to quit thinking like a dog and about what a dog wants or likes and think what it will take to get her purring. There is a reason that one of the slang terms for a woman's sex relates to cats.

[athanasius1812]

Thank you for the replies. There is of course more to the story. I am a somewhat scarred former police officer. I had the unfortunate duty of dealing with children professionally, and when I opened our business I did it because I could no longer bear to do my job. One month later my wife was deployed to Iraq leaving me a single father with a sudden career change and no direction, and 6 months later her HIMMIT was hit by an IED and she came back with a major traumatic brain injury, (she is 100% disabled, though you wouldn't know it to talk to her).

Medically we are both supposed to be fully functional, but it isn't that easy. We are working at it, but I don't know how to convey to her how important physical affection is to me. She seems stuck on the high-school idea of guys just wanting to "get off". How do I explain that sex may be the act, but it is the connection I crave. If were just the physical release I would do it myself, but I need to know I am desired by her.