Sexless mariage

Hey @Gassalicious

I'm so sorry to hear about your issues. I know how it can feel to be in a loveless relationship. I think it's possible that your husband is asexual if he isn't interested in sex in general, especially if it has always been that way. There are other possibilities as well though:

1. He may have a medical condition that lowers his sex drive.

2. It may be a cultural difference, since most Asian cultures place less importance on sex, pleasure (especially female pleasure), and expressing love in a marriage. He might just be placing more importance on fulfilling his duty, providing for his family, and not consider this aspect important.

3. He may not understand what he should do to make things better. I'm not sure how elaborative your conversations were but sometimes the partner understands that what they're doing/aren't doing is hurting you but don't actually know how to make things better.

Maybe it's a good idea to have a conversation with him that's centered on why he does or doesn't do something and understanding how he sees a situation. Either way, physical intimacy is definitely an important part of any relationship so it's not right that he has just been ignoring your needs despite you communicating them so many times. If he's not willing to listen to you about it, he might take it more seriously coming from a therapist, if that's an option for you both.

Honestly, try watching porn together or going to events that can bring out that side of him. If he is asexual, then maybe suggest him using toys on you so he can at least pleasure you while not having to go through with penetrative sex and hopefully it will lead into him wanting too. Although being asexual is something that he can't control so don't take it personal if he really doesn't seem into it. An asexual doesn't take pleasure towards sexual acts and so having sex is almost the same as washing the dishes. He can't read your mind so tell him what to do and have him practice at it. It probably won't be the best at first but at least he's trying. He can also be over worked as well. So a vacation can help.

It seems he has fallen into a routine in terms of being happy elsewhere and not thinking about you often. I believe that a person can love someone but sometimes there comes a time where a SO can feel like a roommate. Try spending more time with him even if it doesn't involve sex sometimes just being with the person and doing something new can bring out new sides within, which can make you both appreciate each others company.

You got this!

I’m in a sexless marriage myself. My husband and I have been together and married going on 7 years now. Throughout the whole relationship we have never had sex. He found out he has low testosterone and the doctor told him he would have to get weekly injections but he doesn’t want to do that. He wants to find a natural way. He says if I’m more sexually aggressive that it would fix it. The therapist I talked to says no because of his medical condition and mental state that even if I were aggressive that wouldn’t fix it. He likes to kinda of put everything on me, he’s not very romantic at all. He doesn’t really do romantic things. He is pretty selfish, has lashed out on me before that I now have anxiety and am on medication. My best friend doesn’t like him at all. He is kinda of controlling, Not sure what to do really.

This sounds so stressful. Do you have a therapist? I would consider getting one for yourself to brainstorm solutions and process what you want to do. Another option is getting a couples’ counselor but my understanding is that if you live in the US then couples’ counseling usually isn’t covered by insurance. But I think getting a therapist to talk to could be a good first step.

Are you me haha? I am a man but on the opposite side of this coin. My wife (in her early 30s) is rarely interested in any sort of sex no matter how much I try to work on that area with her. It’s really challenging when your partner just treats your sexual needs like something small that’s a “you” problem. I always thought it was common knowledge that being married meant you put some effort into sexually pleasuring your spouse along with other areas of marriage but apparently some people didn’t get the memo. It’s not like I have crazy sex needs just something more frequent than once every 1.5 years would be nice.

I’d recommend couples therapy if your spouse is open to it.

I'm sorry that you are going through this, though I'm admittedly a little comforted that I'm not the only woman in a sexless marriage that is struggling and frustrated.

This thread has made me realize I am not alone but has also made me very sad that so many people suffer from a sexless relationship. I am 27 and have never felt so “unsexy” as I do now. We have been together 8 years & sex was never a huge part and I just hoped it would get better with time and effort. Time has come and gone and the effort has stopped. I have been the one putting in the effort only to feel turned down which has turned me off. I love him dearly and wish he showed more sexual attraction. He is not up for counseling or hormone checks. I do not believe he is asexual.. his drive was slightly higher when we met… am I wrong for wanting a sex filled life? I am so jealous of all my friends who have crazy sex lives and I don’t even know how to begin the conversation at this point because he just shuts down.

Frankly, I'm surprised to find so many wives struggling with a sexless marriage because I suppose that society has told us that the male testosterone drive prevails. I hope that doesn't make me sound sexist but that's the message I've gotten from society.

I've considered that decline in marital sex is an evolutionary normal progression of life, basically once a couple have been together for a few years and perhaps produced offspring we get bored of the relationship and begin to seek out new partners to improve the diversification of our species. I don't know about the rest of you but every time I meet someone new from the opposite sex my brain lights up with thoughts about what it would be like to have a relationship with this person.

I'm in the same boat with a sexless marriage. We used to have a great sex life but now my wife thinks that sex is an optional activity between young folks and marriage is really just about caring for each other. Well I got married to have a lover not just a caretaker.

Sex is a basic physiological need and shouldn't be considered optional. I'm curious if the rest of you experience this, the longer I go without sex the more vivid my dreams of an affair become and the more drawn I am to looking at the opposite sex when out and about.

I understand that there are hormonal changes that happen in our lives but I was hoping that we could still touch each other and continue to experience the big O throughout our lives even if we don't have penetrative sex - but that doesn't happen anymore.

As with several of the posters above - I've brought the sex topic up but after a while it just becomes a sore subject. I also do my best to help with chores and most of the time I do the dishes.

One thing that doesn't help is that sex is still a taboo topic in much of society. Our society has created monogamy and marriage but there's no option to seek sexual satisfaction outside of that relationship (at least in the eyes of the church and traditional society). There are open marriages but that isn't an option if your partner is traditional. You can try to have an affair but if found out that will end in divorce.

If you have kids, property and/or a family business divorce becomes a very messy option.

Self-care is the only option.

I think we should have more options to support each other. This forum is good but so far not many posts, how about a sexless marriage chat? We would just have to make sure it doesn't get out of hand, stayed civil and doesn't become a dating scene.

I'm glad I found this thread. I too am in a long term sexless relationship. I've done multiple years of couples counselling and the relationship is still sexless. I still recommend therapy. I just caution against seeing it as "the fix".

I too went down the feeling unsexy due to the lack of intimacy, leading to resentment and eventually no longer desiring my partner, path. It was a hard dark lonely time.

Eventually I concluded this was my insecurity. I didn't/don't believe in my own sexiness, so I was hyper sensitive to our intimacy failures. So I'm currently working on loving myself, in all senses of the word. I'm not there yet, but the more I believe that I am amazing and my feelings and desires and wants are valid, the more I've started to feel attracted to my partner and open to trying to resolve the sex problem again.

Communicate, communicate, communicate, is so so true. But again, after many false starts and failures with my partner, I've had to accept that I need to sort out my own thoughts on the sex taboo. "Nice girls don't talk about dirty subjects", has been so socially ingrained in me that it is threatening my relationship.

So I came here looking for a safe place to talk about sex and intimacy, to start breaking down my difficulties in talking about it. I'm disappointed to discover that intimacy is a tiny, unpopular corner of this site. Yet you hear, "sex is an important part of relationships" all the time. If it is important, why aren't we talking about it? I'm going to.

I don't know if the sex part of my relationship will work out. But I do know that, whatever happens, I will come out more secure and better able to communicate and overall a stronger person and this will help me in the future, either here, in this relationship or somewhere else. And I'm good with that for now.

I recommend therapy, both individual and couples, for getting me out of a hole. I recommend this site for teaching me about believing in myself, so the need for validation from my partner has become less strong. And I recommend the book "Come as you are" by Emily Nagoski. They are poor recommendations because I'm still unsatisfied by the lack of sexual intimacy in my relationship, so take them with a pinch of salt.

What you want is valid. Keep fighting for it. And if you find the way, please let me know. I believe there is a way for those of us who believe in "until death do us part" and I believe we will be better for finding it.

Love and best wishes for finding your solution.

**Here is the perspective of the partner not providing the sexual satisfaction their spouse wants:**

im hoping this will help you all with making your relationships better with your partners. A fair warning though, there are some differences in your situations and mine, which I’ll list out:

My husband and I have only been married a few months so the issue isn’t a natural decline in interest, nor is it a natural decline in libido due to age (I’m 26). Some of it is because I have a chronic medical condition that prevents me from ‘getting wet down there’ and had lowered my libido, AND I was sexually assaulted as a child by someone I trusted so there is some definite anxiety stemming from that. The end result is that sex is incredibly painful for me unless I’m turned on, but turning me on is difficult because of the anxiety from being SA’d and from being forced to have painful sex with my husband or deal with a temper tantrum/aggression from him for turning him down when he was aroused.

After several months of constant fights, we (and by that, I mean mainly he) finally figured out that sex is amazing if I’m turned on before he penetrates me. Here is what we did to make our sex life better:

1. To get to that point, I had to give him step by step instructions on what to do and say to turn me on and it has worked every time he has followed them to a T.
2. There were also SEVERAL conversations where I spelled out to him that I have extreme anxiety around sex because of being SA’d and him forcing me to have sex with him despite it being extremely painful for me just because he got turned on makes me infinitely more anxious about it. The end result is that I’m afraid of being even remotely intimate or romantic with him, even when I’m kind of turned on, because it might arouse him and might lead to more painful forced sex. Those of you reading this, please check with your partner if sex is painful to them because I can guarantee, that’s a major deterrent. Most people don’t want to subject themselves to pain willingly just so their partner can get pleasure. I had to describe the pain to my husband multiple times and compare it to situations he can relate to for him to really understand my problem. He now tries to respect it when I say no to sex without picking a fight.
3. Another major factor was that I felt like the only time he wants to be romantic towards me or intimate with me is when he wants to have sex. It made/makes me feel as if he only loves me if and when I’m pleasuring him sexually. A large part of this was also related to feeling like he prioritizes his work, his dog, and his friends over me. We spend most of each day at home (still working remotely) around each other but there is a stark difference between spending time around someone and spending time with someone. He also had very vocal expectations that I should do most of the cooking (and I mean freshly cooked food for every meal), help out equally with the cleaning, help take care of the dog (meaning I take it out for walks and it’s business, groom it, put away it’s toys when it’s done playing, clean its bowls and feed it, while all my husband does is play with it when he has time), do the weekly shopping, manage our finances, pay the bills (both for our joint stuff and his bills as well), shower every time I get sweaty, and at the end of the day, dress like a hooker so he can get turned on and “make love to me”. All with a full time job. I do most of this but he had a very rude awakening about some parts of those expectations. Most of those expectations are because his mother was a housewife and did those things while he was growing up so that formed his worldview of what a marriage is and also what he needs from a relationship since he no longer has a caretaker in the form of his mother. The moral being to check with your partner about what sort of a relationship they had with their mother/father and what sort of a marriage their parents had. Chances are, their expectations from you are heavily influenced by that and by cultural traditions.
4. I already kind of mentioned this but generally I start my day early and have very busy days, both at work and after, so when I’m done with everything, I am already tired to my bones. If I take a few hours to wind down and relax, it gets too late to have sex because all I can think of is how tired I am and how I need to wake up in 5 hours. I also have no incentive to go straight from working all day to dressing up like a hooker and trying to seduce my husband for all the spicy sex I’m too tired to have. This is why taking your partner out on a date or for a vacation, or relaxing them in general creates a very positive environment for having sex. Be sure to find out what works best on your partner. Also be sure to do it just to treat them, without the expectation that they owe you sex because you did something nice for them. Also be aware that it might take a few times of doing this before you see any results so be patient. It also goes a VERY long way to compliment your partner at least once a day, and not just on their appearance.

I think this post is long enough. I hope it helps at least some of you improve your relationship with your partner. Also, I definitely would not mind any suggestions you may have for me from your years of experience.