Are there any midlife women who want daily sex?

[ssmguy]

Making love has many dimensions.

They (and you) miss out on comforting your spouse in times of mourning,

or comfort and reassure when there is fear of the biopsy results,

or joyous celebratory sex when you child gets married or graduates...or you GET THAT DREAM JOB...it's for all the

warm or frightening but touching MOMENTS in life

that you want to share...FULLY...with your mate. Fully connect, fully share.

Though you might not think so, we do have those connections. Just as I do with other members of my family, and I obviously don't have sex with them. I think for people who ML often, all these things get related emotionally. I would speculate that my experience has made love and sex more separate for me at this point.

If you were okay with no sex, I'd say nothing. But you are not okay with it. And it's not just sex you are doing without, but all forms of physical touch. How sterile.

We do have touch, just not sexual touch.

Not wanting you to touch her breasts or her womanly parts is

pretty odd for someone having sex.
What was allowed, eye contact? HOW'd you have kids?

She was OK with intercourse, just not all that "touching and feeling up", which somehow reminded her of stuff she wasn't supposed to allow.

First, It's NOT about whether she likes sex, but about whether she loves you.

She does express her love for me, and she's very considerate in other ways. Just like your mom or dad might have been to you.

IF she truly loves you and isn't harboring some wacky anger or other "issues", then she would naturally want to please you EVEN IF she has zero libido.

Now that I have learned how much more a sexual relationship can be, I'm not excited about going back to just being serviced by someone with zero libido and zero arousal after a lot of cajoling.

[ssmguy]

How do you handle a big difference in libido expressed as a difference in desired frequency? That's certainly a difficulty we had after the initial novelty of sex in our relationship. Though I was frustrated, I wasn't worried about the long term because I believed the general advice that women become more comfortable and orgasm-driven by their 30's and 40's. Which, of course, didn't happen in our case. And I also believed that general advice that men's libido drops off with age, which hasn't happened yet in my case, not even in the slightest.

How should I have handled it when I wanted sex about once a day, and she wanted it only once a week? Well, she said she wanted it only once a week, but with our busy schedules and things, many of those "weekly" opportunities were postponed by an extra week, etc. I kept trying to be romantic and hinting about sex to the point that she just got annoyed with it. To her it seemed ridiculously often after we both got jobs, a house, and kids. I remember once just being happy to see her and giving her a kiss, and she got really annoyed because she could tell I was getting aroused, even though she knew I had no intention of having sex at that point. She just started thinking of me as being "way too sexual", period. It didn't matter that we would cuddle, hug, and kiss often without sex.

I keep hearing the advice that one should compromise in many ways. And so that's what we did. And I was reasonably happy with it. But here's the thing. Biologically speaking, in terms of fantasy and physical readiness, I've always been eager for more in 12-24 hours, if not sooner, and certainly by 48 hours. And so what happened is that easily 90% of the sex I had was by myself, and only 10% with my wife. Looking back on it, it seems that this caused a sexual/emotional separation because the vast majority of my sexual energy was focused in a solitary setting. And I felt I needed to be OK with it because at the time I agreed that my sex drive was unreasonably high. In fact, I started feeling bad about my sexaul feelings because I could see they were hurting our relationship.

After a while, it got to the point where the compromise would be for her to just give me an HJ, so she wouldn't have to participate when she didn't want to. But I always liked the HJ's to last a long time, so that started annoying her too. As I remember it, she just became more and more disgusted with my sexuality, no matter how much togetherness and sharing we had otherwise.

Can anybody relate to this?

[25yearsmlc]

cant relate to all of it for sure. Obviously.


But imo, I SOMETIMES think mb is wrong if it decreases the sex drive of the person, AND then their partner is deprived of it later on b/c the person already took care of their own needs...

Make sense?

Perhaps she felt oddly uncomfortable knowing you were on your own 90% of the time, & thinking of whomever....idk.

You said there was no physical touch. But then you said There IS cuddling and kissing BUT THEN
you said she resents you getting interested or fears you'll get aroused,

soooo is it happening or not? Is it just the same as "with a parent", as you wrote?

And you seem now to defend the way it is, so what is it you want?

Are you okay with your sex life, as it is, or not?

How can WE help?

If You just want a sounding board for people who "relate", There are some forums for that here.

Youngatheart is into it and can probably direct you.

[25yearsmlc]

ps


ssm, do you see why I feel confused? You say NOW that you have "fully connected" feelings...

and now you say you DO have touch, just not sexual.

Alright, so you really feel close to her, and you feel fully loved by her and loving for her. That's great.

IF you think not having sex isn't a big enough problem to be a dealbreaker,
I'd still say work on it for your sake.

BUT your next answer will be "already did. Tried EVERYTHING. Therapists made it worse..."

So, I'm at a loss. If you've "tried everything", (which of course I don't accept but will not argue) then really it's all about what's alright with you.

If it's alright never to have sex of any kind with anyone again,

or not worth rocking the boat,

then I guess you need to drop the issue and count your blessings. (note, I didn't say to leave her. i said 'rock the boat")

And if it's NOT alright for you to permanently give up on all sex, then you have to DO or SAY something new/different, don't you?

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

Can anybody relate to this?

Although the details are different, yes, I can relate to this because your situation has much familiarity to me and my situation.

The Captain

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

It is quite possible to feel warmly for and care deeply about someone at a level to decribe in it terms of connected.

It is possible to have touch and not have it at all be sexual.

AND it is also possible to feel greatly betrayed and disapponted because one's EXPECTATIONS of how a sex life might look within marriage a much less and much less satisfactory than you expected.

It could be a dealbreaker but it's more a matter of the disappointment one settles with rather than being a "dealbreaker."

Just because you have nuclear weapons doesn't mean that you have to use them because something doesn't meet with expectations.

But there is also another side...the sense that no matter what (and it becomes clear that IS the situation) there can be no effect on the sexless marriage (unless you actually use the nukes, in this case ending the marriage, not threatening to do so, but to actually go through with ending the marriage).

And the question is how much do you want to overturn your life just to get NO RESULTS?

The problem isn't that there is no sex, the problem is that these women see no value in sex.

None.

Zero.

Nada.

Zilch.

And the way to know is in their actions.

I have 14 years of actions (and lack of action) as evidence. SSMGUY also has long-experienced similar issues.

Venting here is a way to speak out the frustration, to know that we are not alone and maintain some sanity in the face of a hopelessness of a non-sexual life for the rest of our marriages.

The Captain

[25yearsmlc]

well Captain I understand the venting. Strikes me as very sad.


At DB land, we are trying to help m's...

The premise is solution based, w/the simple but radical idea that one should

do what helps the m, and less or none of, what hurts it.


and this all just sounds damn tragic to me.

Are you sure your w's wouldn't change something if they KNEW how you really truly felt?

ANd if your answer is, "25, SHE knows...she just doesn't care" then I guess

I think it's more than just low libido.

I have had low libido temporarily--so I say this from experience post partum for a several months after d1, and again after my father's death.

But we still ML...

so honestly while I DO get the Lack of interest, for awhile

(and assume it's like that for them all the time)

b/c like I said, even when mine was hormonally low or emotionally low,

we still ml. Mostly b/c I know IT matters to h.

How can it not?

I'm left with the feeling it's very selfish or naive of your w's to withold this, or there's something else going on.

But if you are alright with it, so be it.

If you want advice on how to change it, we can try.

If you want to vent, so be it. Do you feel that helps the marriage?

[ssmguy]

But imo, I SOMETIMES think mb is wrong if it decreases the sex drive of the person, AND then their partner is deprived of it later on b/c the person already took care of their own needs...

Make sense?

Yeah, I agree with that. I would have saved myself for someone who wanted it. That would be a new experience for me, to say the least.

Perhaps she felt oddly uncomfortable knowing you were on your own 90% of the time, & thinking of whomever....idk.

Maybe long ago, but not now. This is the woman who gives me Palyboy type calendars as Christmas gifts and has told me why can't I just take care of myself?

You said there was no physical touch. But then you said There IS cuddling and kissing BUT THEN
you said she resents you getting interested or fears you'll get aroused,

I was recently talking about 30 years ago. Earlier I was talking about now. No physical sexual touch ever, besides intercourse. Hugging always. Massage OK, but never led to anything else. Intercourse was OK at first, then it thinned out, then mostly just HJ's, then even that got tiring (understandably, she gets nothing out of that, really).

[ssmguy]

The problem isn't that there is no sex, the problem is that these women see no value in sex.

I think that's exactly right. If you've never had an O yourself, how could you possibly understand another person's seeming obsession with just rubbing oneself into a state of pleasure? It's almost comical if you think of it that way. And so she knows this is something I can do by myself. And she knows she's providing me comfort and companionship is many other ways. And she knows guys often are quite happy with a Playboy magazine alone in a bathroom -- goodness knows she observed that growing up with her brothers. So I don't think she'll really ever understand.

[Cyrena]

Somehow, when I read all SSMGuy and Tea's assumptions and explanations of how their wives feel ... I just can't buy it. They don't ring true to me, and seem more in the realm of mind-reading and self-justification than genuine understanding. They also don't explain why many wives in the same situation of denying sex for years suddenly have torrid affairs. Denying, controlling, rejecting--those are all the actions of bitterly unhappy women. I think YAH is correct that they stem from anger, not from complete satisfaction in half-marriages. It would be interesting to hear from some of these women--I'm sure that, as in all other types of marriages where communication has broken down, the stories from both sides would be shockingly different.