Not fully dead, but having a kid really wrecked our sex life for a few years. Some of it was my fault, some was just hormones and adjustment to new responsibilities.
My ex partner had experienced sexual trauma in the past, which made it difficult.
It was entirely understandable on her part. However, over the course of a few years, it just became easier to just not try than to bring back all of that pain.
Sounds like I’m a horrible person, but my ex-gf gained around 45 kg ( no there was no disease or something wrong with her – she was incredibly lazy once we started dating )
When I first met her, she was around 60kg. I can tolerate a lot of weight and fat mass, but at some point she was unrecognisable. She was not the woman I fell in love with.
She almost reached 110kg at around 168cm tall
I was incapable of getting an erection when sober. I had to drink actively so I can have sex with her.
It wasnt even just the mass she put on, but also her mindset, that was incredibly unsexy. Not working on yourself being lazy and expect from me to love her no matter what.
Mine isn’t dead, but i feel the dry seasons come when I turn my eyes to porn regularly instead of her, as well lack of communication, she desires that closeness in communication which I fail so badly at.
We have been married for over 30 years. We drifted apart thanks to working long hours and I suffered two physical injuries. She lowered her expectations of what our marriage should look like. We are both retiring soon and working on our marriage. Things have improved now that we can concentrate on each other again.
First, I felt rushed into sex. I wasn’t ready at the time and mentioned that to my ex but she kept pushing it until I reluctantly agreed. I didn’t really enjoy it the first time but said yeah I did. The longer the relationship went on, the more I of course felt comfortable.
After a bit, I kind of stopped caring about it. We both would basically blue ball each other. Me playing video games or her saying we’re going to do it…and then do something else and go to bed. There was one time she rubbed my junk and said good night and smiled at me. There were other times she said she wanted to do it and then pulled back on it. There were other variables I don’t want to get into but we weren’t just trying anymore.
She eventually did cheat on me a couple of times, and the second time she went to another man arms. Now she’s living a happy life.
I spent too much time on my phone and not enough time meeting my wife’s physical and emotional needs. Once I fixed those things, she lit up and we started having regular sex again. Also, we needed to talk more about sex with each other.
GF in my mid-20s. Started no longer being affectionate, then was suddently over affectionate some days of the week. I remember after one dry spell when we did have sex, it just didn’t feel right. She wasn’t herself, was very rigid and cold.
She was cheating with a coworker that entire time. A few months later I left work early and caught her in the act at her apartment.
I’m a man that successfully turned around a dead bedroom after years of trying.
Long story short, I struggled to be physically vulnerable and intimate. I also had horrible depression and anxiety which made me withdraw mentally from her and life in general. Luckily she was nothing but patient and loving, and with some assistance from some other factors in life it’s gotten much better.
I started seeing a therapist, who helped with mental health and also prescribed me as adhd, which has helped understand myself better. I work harder on my style/fashion so I feel better about myself, and I’ve read a lot of self help books, including books about growing up religious and how it can create unhealthy views towards healthy sex
Undiagnosed perimenopause completely killed her desire for sex and the physical symptoms made sex painful for her on the few occasions she tried so it stopped.
The sad part is this situation is really common and (because we all want to convince ourselves that we will be young forever) the blame sometimes gets shifted onto the other partner who can’t do anything to fix it.
Marrying a lesbian who wanted to act like she was normal hetero with benefits.
After the kids were born. She went from avoiding sex to open refusal. Said I was a pervert for wanting sex.
That went on for 20 years. I then found someone who actually wanted sex with me.
I don’t know and wish I did. Our sex was great and kept getting better but then we both lost interest. and it seems the reasons and opinions are all over the place.
Once we bought a house, it was like she flipped a switch. All this bad behavior came up, sexual criticisms that didn’t exist before, “ugh, you want sex now?! Great. Now I feel bad if I don’t say yes” I always said it was ok to say no. Don’t worry, I learned to stop asking to avoid this. She was a master at reversing blame. She stopped shaving her legs and taking care of herself. “Too bad, you’re married!” She’d tell me when her sis and mom brought this up without me asking. At the end, I was treated with such disdain and disrespect that I didn’t find her attractive anymore. One more bout of abuse and left. Seemed I was a means to an end for that house to her and discarded as soon as I finished remodeling the house. You think you know a person…
No appreciation, no enthusiasm, a lot of stress. No foreplay, she was just boring. Sometimes we would go a month without sex, on my end. She just didn’t do it for me anymore. I thought I could settle with that but I was wrong. It got to the point where I would just eat her out so she could cum and that was a wrap for me, either going to bed, playing the game, or watching a movie
She didn’t want me to use a condom, didn’t want to use birth control, and didn’t want to go to the doctor to ensure that her IUD was still functional because it was past the 7 year mark.
Sorry, but I’m not getting roped into having a kid with someone who refuses to do the bare minimum.
Both had kids from previous relationship. She started having one or two drinks every night after work and would start arguments over little things when my kid was there and hers wasn’t. I couldn’t stand to look at her after awhile. We didn’t stay together.
Age, stress, hormones.
Ironically enough, my wife has always been overweight throughout our marriage, with relatively low self-esteem, regardless of my compliments and desires. But our sex life was wonderful.
A few years ago, she had bariatric surgery and lost 150 pounds, got a nursing job in an office, so she stopped wearing only scrubs for the first time in 20 years.
She suddenly had more energy, she started dressing in clothes that made her feel pretty (read: not “fat girl” clothes, her words), and her self-confidence went through the roof.
Of course, I’ve always been attracted to only her, but the changes, both physically and mentally, made me feel even more so. It was as of, after 25 years, I was finally meeting the real woman that I married, if that makes sense.
The ironic part is that her sex drive is now at zero.
We went from at least once a week on average to…never? I can’t remember the last time we had sex, honestly, its been almost a year, probably.
I know that hormonal changes account for a great deal (she in her early 50’s, I in my late), I just think that it’s a cruel joke that as soon as her body and confidence rose to the healthiest shes ever been, her desire for me dropped.
My ex would never initiate, never once in the time we were together. This made me feel unattractive and undesired.
When I initiated I would be met by either rejection (80% of the time) or a condescending “oh you men need your little bit” if I was accepted.
If I didn’t initiate when she was interested (how would I know ?) she would get passive aggressive and snarky.
When we were intimate, I did all the work. I learned what she liked, I spend hours and hours giving her oral, and when she came (sometimes two or three times) she would roll over and go to sleep. She never once put a hand on me, or showed any interest in my pleasure. The two or three times I asked she would jerk me off for 30 seconds and then stop.
Sex was a morbid experience.
I tried talking to her about it, but she would not ever talk about it. Just before we got married (I know), something broke in me and I wasn’t able to do it with her again.
Once married, she wanted kids. And when we weren’t having sex, she would be angry with me until I did it. She was constantly passive aggressive and on my case about little things. She wouldn’t listen to what I had to say and she’d flip it and blame it all on me.
The very last time we had sex she had been measuring her cycle, and her body was ready. She was crying for the child she wanted, I was crying for the love I had lost.
It was always destined to be a deadbedroom but I did not know or understand what I was dealing with.
I spent years chasing the goalposts. It never dawned on me there was never going to be a win.
It wasn’t until I stumbled onto a letter written that predated me that I understood her libido was only good during crisis. Her life was always in crisis and once I stabilized it the libido went away.
Sex was a means to an end for my ex. I was in a cycle I did not understand and only breaking it was going to.end it.
We’re married 25y next month. Some switch went off in her about 15y ago. Stopped being playful, attentive, curious. Will still have sex with me but it’s almost totally a starfish “hurry up so we can order dinner” feel. Doesn’t make suggestions or try to change positions or offer encouragement. Last fall, after a vacation where she was like her old self for the first 2 days and then I was back to roommate once other houseguests arrived, I decided I was no longer going to cuddle, rub, initiate, compliment. She hasn’t mentioned it, doesn’t seem to feel like something is missing. I couldn’t tell you the last time she rubbed my scalp on the couch or hugged me from behind as I wash dishes. The most I’ll get is when she gets up in the a.m. she might squeeze my foot as she passes the end of the bed. I do love her and think she’s beautiful. I miss that part of her immensely. I remember once not long before we were married she showed up at my place in a heels and a raincoat with just panties on beneath. I miss those assertive adventurous moments terribly. I have told her how I feel physically neglected numerous times. It’s like the only thing we’ve ever had a heated discussion about
Her addiction to stress. She chases it like a drug. In a choice between going on a date or checking her email and getting outraged about something, she’ll take the email every time. In a choice between clearing up a simple miscommunication with no consequences or blowing a situation up into something huge with lots of hurt feelings, she’ll reach for the dynamite. She wants to inflict the pain. She wants to be overwhelmed. She wants to be burnt out. As you can imagine, none of these things put her in the mood.
Not totally dead but headed that way unless things change. We started trying to have kids naturally in 2020 but couldn’t. Sex became a task and was timed, scheduled, and scrutinized. Not having kids naturally turned into doing IVF. That whole process was hard and traumatic for my wife. It’s 2025 and we’re still not done with it. We got an amazing kid out of it, but we want a second. Either way, sex has never been the same since before 2020. My wife is pregnant right now with our second, so there’s no end in sight for this issue. Essentially 5 of the 6 years we’ve been married have been this way. It’s worn on me a lot.
She’d had her father abandon her at two, had multiple men in her life die on her unexpectedly, and was sexually abused as a teenager. This led her to develop a fear of emotional intimacy, an inverse relationship between sex and closeness, and a belief that women attract men through their sexuality.
As a single girl trying to impress a new man, she was wild and uninhibited and genuinely the best and freakiest partner I’ve ever had.
The more serious relationship got, the less interested she became. Milestones like moving in together, getting married, and having a child each led to dramatic reductions in our sex life.
This was compounded by some of my own behaviors, including gaining weight, and the fact that I’m not a great housemate, which reduced her attraction to me, and started to build resentments for her.
When I had, but survived, a heart attack, it triggered a lot of her abandonment fears, and the led to her shutting down a lot of our emotional connection and beginning to distance herself from the marriage.
The death blow, however, came when we inadvertently reenacted her sexual trauma through a combination of a misguided request, miscommunication, and the “freeze” response, where her body disconnected from her brain when she wanted to tell me no.
That moment permanently shifted her view of me from “safe” to “unsafe”, dropped her out of in love with me, and put the nail in the coffin of both the sex life and the marriage.
Understandably, in hindsight, but since we didn’t communicate about it it was mystifying and painful to me at the time.
She resented me for not being the safe man that she had romanticized me as, for not being able to be the permanent male fixture in her life, and for the little ways in which her cleanliness standard exceeded mine around the household.
I resented her for, from my perspective, bait and switching by using her sexuality to attract me, and then withdrawing any attempt to meet my sexual needs while demanding monogamy.
It was excruciatingly painful to be in love with the woman next to me, six inches away, and feel like I was no longer worthy of her love.
It took us another 10 years to finally reach the point of divorce.
Hormonal birth control and a wife that has a lot of hangups about sex. Also shes the type that isnt interested when shes stressed and shes always stressed. I did all I could to try and make her life less stressful and she would just take on more responsibilities she shouldnt. Shes a people pleaser except when it comes to me.
Mid-50’s hormone issues with my SO… all initmacy stopped except obligatory BJ’s maybe once every 3 months…. Then that trailed off and she started drinking and weed use more heavily…. I lost respect for her, and eventually asked her to move out. Been almost three yrs now, no contact.
I’m super happy that I ended the slow dumpster fire that was our life at that point.
There’s something called “The Marriage Wheel.” Look it up, our story is not unique.
No one picked wrong, no one ignored more red flags than usual, it’s just simple biology. Nothing lasts forever. It’s crazy how fast you can go from soaking the sheets and fucking up the mattress to taking a back seat to a romance novel.
Once you understand the truth your ego doesn’t hurt anymore. Even if you traveled back in time and pinpointed the moment, you could never stop it.
She just spent all her time on her phone. Didn’t communicate properly, was really messy, couldn’t make any plans for the future and blamed her anxiety and then whenever we would discuss anything she would shout and lecture me and couldn’t have a discussion about anything nearing political…she was very pretty, but revealed something ugly which I didn’t find attractive.
Thankfully no kids and I was able to leave and move on.
No idea. We’ve had ebbs and flows, kids, married for decades, etc. All of the sudden 2 years ago, it went from once a week to once every 6-8 months. Try to talk about it and that goes nowhere. I get tired of consistently getting rejected and just quit trying and then will try again for a bit and just get rejected all over again.
I’ll never stop telling her that she beautiful, sexy, and complimenting what she is wearing and how she makes me feel, but doing date nights, vacations away from kids and all that stuff is a hard thing to get motivated to organize now.
I used to do that stuff a lot and my memories of those moments are never about being intimate but somehow it plays a part and I struggle to spend time/money researching and planning now. (Even though I do have two events for this summer, including going to see her favorite band.)
She is 5’2 and went from 130 lbs to 189. Big belly etc. became lazy and inactive. Claimed she was eating from stress from her friends stress. Me I’ve always been the athletic one and stayed in shape. I get mistaken for 40 and I’m 59. She gets mistaken for 65 and she is 59.
The emotional, physical, and romantic effort was very one sided for a long time. We talked about it, but nothing changed. Eventually I stopped trying to see if she would notice or step up. She didn’t. Divorced now.
Almost as soon as we got married my wife got sick and with the constant surgries we never really got to develope that part of the relationship. It doesn’t help seeing her struggle daily to find the energy to do small things around the house, just in a constant state of fatigue and pain. Seeing what this dieseas has done to her body with all the scars and tumors and weight gain it’s kind of a constant reminder.
My wife straight up told me that she had her 2 kids a d that’s what she wanted, that women only have sex with men as a means to getting them to marry them then get pregnant, and now that that goal has been achieved, sex no longer serves a purpose. We still do it from time to time, maybe 2 times a month if I’m lucky. It’s always initiated by me and if she wants it but I don’t initiate I get fallout of her being upset for several days for not wanting her. But if I do try and she doesn’t want it I’m a hound dog asshole only chasing sex and only doing things like watching TV with her just so I’ll get sex.
I’ve learned I’m always wrong, it doesn’t matter what I do I’m wrong, and if I try to talk to other people about this I’m wrong, so I just accept that anything I want or desire or is important for me to feel happy is wrong. Someday soon hopefully disease will take me and my wife can use the insurance money to find happiness with a different man and the kids can be looked after.
She had too many restrictions on sex in the first place.
Only at night when we were going to bed.
Only when her daughter wasn’t at the house. Which meant at best we were looking at only being able to have sex every other Saturday night. And if she didn’t have her daughter we had to go to the club so she could dance. So, by the time we got home, i was mentally and physically exhausted.
Only in bed.
Only missionary or doggy. Two positions that do nothing for me.
She wouldn’t touch my penis.
On top of all of that, she was very insecure because her ex-husband cheated on her constantly. To the point that if we went out shopping and an attractive woman walked in front of us, she would get pissed and start a fight with me because “i was looking at the woman.”
None of this happened until after we moved in together. So after having a somewhat normal sex life, because she’d go out of her way to have someone watch her daughter so we could have time together, to constantly being rejected, i quit trying because she constantly said no to sex. And she put in no effort to have sex if i didn’t try to initiate.
Comments
Being abused emotionally. I could fake the relationship, but I could not fake sexual attraction.
She had a mental block regarding sexual intimacy, I stayed with her for as long as I could but it was to my own detrimental.
Not fully dead, but having a kid really wrecked our sex life for a few years. Some of it was my fault, some was just hormones and adjustment to new responsibilities.
My ex partner had experienced sexual trauma in the past, which made it difficult.
It was entirely understandable on her part. However, over the course of a few years, it just became easier to just not try than to bring back all of that pain.
Sounds like I’m a horrible person, but my ex-gf gained around 45 kg ( no there was no disease or something wrong with her – she was incredibly lazy once we started dating )
When I first met her, she was around 60kg. I can tolerate a lot of weight and fat mass, but at some point she was unrecognisable. She was not the woman I fell in love with.
She almost reached 110kg at around 168cm tall
I was incapable of getting an erection when sober. I had to drink actively so I can have sex with her.
It wasnt even just the mass she put on, but also her mindset, that was incredibly unsexy. Not working on yourself being lazy and expect from me to love her no matter what.
Financial issues along with her moms cancer diagnosis derailed the train for a few years. Still recovering.
Mine isn’t dead, but i feel the dry seasons come when I turn my eyes to porn regularly instead of her, as well lack of communication, she desires that closeness in communication which I fail so badly at.
We have been married for over 30 years. We drifted apart thanks to working long hours and I suffered two physical injuries. She lowered her expectations of what our marriage should look like. We are both retiring soon and working on our marriage. Things have improved now that we can concentrate on each other again.
I was just talking about this with my cousin.
First, I felt rushed into sex. I wasn’t ready at the time and mentioned that to my ex but she kept pushing it until I reluctantly agreed. I didn’t really enjoy it the first time but said yeah I did. The longer the relationship went on, the more I of course felt comfortable.
After a bit, I kind of stopped caring about it. We both would basically blue ball each other. Me playing video games or her saying we’re going to do it…and then do something else and go to bed. There was one time she rubbed my junk and said good night and smiled at me. There were other times she said she wanted to do it and then pulled back on it. There were other variables I don’t want to get into but we weren’t just trying anymore.
She eventually did cheat on me a couple of times, and the second time she went to another man arms. Now she’s living a happy life.
I spent too much time on my phone and not enough time meeting my wife’s physical and emotional needs. Once I fixed those things, she lit up and we started having regular sex again. Also, we needed to talk more about sex with each other.
GF in my mid-20s. Started no longer being affectionate, then was suddently over affectionate some days of the week. I remember after one dry spell when we did have sex, it just didn’t feel right. She wasn’t herself, was very rigid and cold.
She was cheating with a coworker that entire time. A few months later I left work early and caught her in the act at her apartment.
Alcohol
Kids… coparent went straight to mommy mode and decided that I wasn’t important enough anymore.
The cell phone, I really have no desire to compete with your screen time for some sexy time.
Wife puts in zero effort. Not dead but if I don’t do everything, nothing gets done.
I’m a man that successfully turned around a dead bedroom after years of trying.
Long story short, I struggled to be physically vulnerable and intimate. I also had horrible depression and anxiety which made me withdraw mentally from her and life in general. Luckily she was nothing but patient and loving, and with some assistance from some other factors in life it’s gotten much better.
I started seeing a therapist, who helped with mental health and also prescribed me as adhd, which has helped understand myself better. I work harder on my style/fashion so I feel better about myself, and I’ve read a lot of self help books, including books about growing up religious and how it can create unhealthy views towards healthy sex
Undiagnosed perimenopause completely killed her desire for sex and the physical symptoms made sex painful for her on the few occasions she tried so it stopped.
The sad part is this situation is really common and (because we all want to convince ourselves that we will be young forever) the blame sometimes gets shifted onto the other partner who can’t do anything to fix it.
Was a narcissist & used it against me. Wouldn’t touch me for months. I’m glad I’m out tho.
Marrying a lesbian who wanted to act like she was normal hetero with benefits.
After the kids were born. She went from avoiding sex to open refusal. Said I was a pervert for wanting sex.
That went on for 20 years. I then found someone who actually wanted sex with me.
My biggest regret was not leaving sooner.
I don’t know and wish I did. Our sex was great and kept getting better but then we both lost interest. and it seems the reasons and opinions are all over the place.
Once we bought a house, it was like she flipped a switch. All this bad behavior came up, sexual criticisms that didn’t exist before, “ugh, you want sex now?! Great. Now I feel bad if I don’t say yes” I always said it was ok to say no. Don’t worry, I learned to stop asking to avoid this. She was a master at reversing blame. She stopped shaving her legs and taking care of herself. “Too bad, you’re married!” She’d tell me when her sis and mom brought this up without me asking. At the end, I was treated with such disdain and disrespect that I didn’t find her attractive anymore. One more bout of abuse and left. Seemed I was a means to an end for that house to her and discarded as soon as I finished remodeling the house. You think you know a person…
No appreciation, no enthusiasm, a lot of stress. No foreplay, she was just boring. Sometimes we would go a month without sex, on my end. She just didn’t do it for me anymore. I thought I could settle with that but I was wrong. It got to the point where I would just eat her out so she could cum and that was a wrap for me, either going to bed, playing the game, or watching a movie
Chose poorly, she had a ton of bad habits and didn’t wanna change
Low libido from other side. So a total mismatch.
She didn’t want me to use a condom, didn’t want to use birth control, and didn’t want to go to the doctor to ensure that her IUD was still functional because it was past the 7 year mark.
Sorry, but I’m not getting roped into having a kid with someone who refuses to do the bare minimum.
… A dead wife?
On my side no issues, I’m always up to action. Flesh may be weak sometimes but I can make up for it.
On my wife’s side, I wish I knew how her desire works. It’s like weather. I can only admire it whatever it is.
Both had kids from previous relationship. She started having one or two drinks every night after work and would start arguments over little things when my kid was there and hers wasn’t. I couldn’t stand to look at her after awhile. We didn’t stay together.
Age, stress, hormones.
Ironically enough, my wife has always been overweight throughout our marriage, with relatively low self-esteem, regardless of my compliments and desires. But our sex life was wonderful.
A few years ago, she had bariatric surgery and lost 150 pounds, got a nursing job in an office, so she stopped wearing only scrubs for the first time in 20 years.
She suddenly had more energy, she started dressing in clothes that made her feel pretty (read: not “fat girl” clothes, her words), and her self-confidence went through the roof.
Of course, I’ve always been attracted to only her, but the changes, both physically and mentally, made me feel even more so. It was as of, after 25 years, I was finally meeting the real woman that I married, if that makes sense.
The ironic part is that her sex drive is now at zero.
We went from at least once a week on average to…never? I can’t remember the last time we had sex, honestly, its been almost a year, probably.
I know that hormonal changes account for a great deal (she in her early 50’s, I in my late), I just think that it’s a cruel joke that as soon as her body and confidence rose to the healthiest shes ever been, her desire for me dropped.
There were a couple of things.
My ex would never initiate, never once in the time we were together. This made me feel unattractive and undesired.
When I initiated I would be met by either rejection (80% of the time) or a condescending “oh you men need your little bit” if I was accepted.
If I didn’t initiate when she was interested (how would I know ?) she would get passive aggressive and snarky.
When we were intimate, I did all the work. I learned what she liked, I spend hours and hours giving her oral, and when she came (sometimes two or three times) she would roll over and go to sleep. She never once put a hand on me, or showed any interest in my pleasure. The two or three times I asked she would jerk me off for 30 seconds and then stop.
Sex was a morbid experience.
I tried talking to her about it, but she would not ever talk about it. Just before we got married (I know), something broke in me and I wasn’t able to do it with her again.
Once married, she wanted kids. And when we weren’t having sex, she would be angry with me until I did it. She was constantly passive aggressive and on my case about little things. She wouldn’t listen to what I had to say and she’d flip it and blame it all on me.
The very last time we had sex she had been measuring her cycle, and her body was ready. She was crying for the child she wanted, I was crying for the love I had lost.
It was brutal.
My ex wife had the same sexual appeal as a Starbucks coffee mug.
It was always destined to be a deadbedroom but I did not know or understand what I was dealing with.
I spent years chasing the goalposts. It never dawned on me there was never going to be a win.
It wasn’t until I stumbled onto a letter written that predated me that I understood her libido was only good during crisis. Her life was always in crisis and once I stabilized it the libido went away.
Sex was a means to an end for my ex. I was in a cycle I did not understand and only breaking it was going to.end it.
Kids
She wanted frequent but boring sex. Like she would have been content with 5 times a week missionary PIV sex.
I wanted infrequent kinky sex. BDSM, anal, toys, roleplay.
She saw sex as….eating lunch every day.
I saw sex as…game night. Let’s have some fun.
It wasnt the tradition issue of high vs low libido.
She was unsatisfied because she (metaphorically) just wanted to drink a protein shake and feel filled.
I (metaphorically) wanted to cook a 5 course meal and enjoy it slowly.
Wedding cake is not an aphrodisiac. As soon as a woman know you can’t leave, the sex stops. Same goes for her being thin, working or being nice.
Leaded
We’re married 25y next month. Some switch went off in her about 15y ago. Stopped being playful, attentive, curious. Will still have sex with me but it’s almost totally a starfish “hurry up so we can order dinner” feel. Doesn’t make suggestions or try to change positions or offer encouragement. Last fall, after a vacation where she was like her old self for the first 2 days and then I was back to roommate once other houseguests arrived, I decided I was no longer going to cuddle, rub, initiate, compliment. She hasn’t mentioned it, doesn’t seem to feel like something is missing. I couldn’t tell you the last time she rubbed my scalp on the couch or hugged me from behind as I wash dishes. The most I’ll get is when she gets up in the a.m. she might squeeze my foot as she passes the end of the bed. I do love her and think she’s beautiful. I miss that part of her immensely. I remember once not long before we were married she showed up at my place in a heels and a raincoat with just panties on beneath. I miss those assertive adventurous moments terribly. I have told her how I feel physically neglected numerous times. It’s like the only thing we’ve ever had a heated discussion about
Her addiction to stress. She chases it like a drug. In a choice between going on a date or checking her email and getting outraged about something, she’ll take the email every time. In a choice between clearing up a simple miscommunication with no consequences or blowing a situation up into something huge with lots of hurt feelings, she’ll reach for the dynamite. She wants to inflict the pain. She wants to be overwhelmed. She wants to be burnt out. As you can imagine, none of these things put her in the mood.
Not totally dead but headed that way unless things change. We started trying to have kids naturally in 2020 but couldn’t. Sex became a task and was timed, scheduled, and scrutinized. Not having kids naturally turned into doing IVF. That whole process was hard and traumatic for my wife. It’s 2025 and we’re still not done with it. We got an amazing kid out of it, but we want a second. Either way, sex has never been the same since before 2020. My wife is pregnant right now with our second, so there’s no end in sight for this issue. Essentially 5 of the 6 years we’ve been married have been this way. It’s worn on me a lot.
Lexapro
Sexual trauma and abandonment trauma.
She’d had her father abandon her at two, had multiple men in her life die on her unexpectedly, and was sexually abused as a teenager. This led her to develop a fear of emotional intimacy, an inverse relationship between sex and closeness, and a belief that women attract men through their sexuality.
As a single girl trying to impress a new man, she was wild and uninhibited and genuinely the best and freakiest partner I’ve ever had.
The more serious relationship got, the less interested she became. Milestones like moving in together, getting married, and having a child each led to dramatic reductions in our sex life.
This was compounded by some of my own behaviors, including gaining weight, and the fact that I’m not a great housemate, which reduced her attraction to me, and started to build resentments for her.
When I had, but survived, a heart attack, it triggered a lot of her abandonment fears, and the led to her shutting down a lot of our emotional connection and beginning to distance herself from the marriage.
The death blow, however, came when we inadvertently reenacted her sexual trauma through a combination of a misguided request, miscommunication, and the “freeze” response, where her body disconnected from her brain when she wanted to tell me no.
That moment permanently shifted her view of me from “safe” to “unsafe”, dropped her out of in love with me, and put the nail in the coffin of both the sex life and the marriage.
Understandably, in hindsight, but since we didn’t communicate about it it was mystifying and painful to me at the time.
She resented me for not being the safe man that she had romanticized me as, for not being able to be the permanent male fixture in her life, and for the little ways in which her cleanliness standard exceeded mine around the household.
I resented her for, from my perspective, bait and switching by using her sexuality to attract me, and then withdrawing any attempt to meet my sexual needs while demanding monogamy.
It was excruciatingly painful to be in love with the woman next to me, six inches away, and feel like I was no longer worthy of her love.
It took us another 10 years to finally reach the point of divorce.
You something interesting, women usually like to come in and put in their two cents but on this topic they’re strangely quiet and not here.
Hormonal birth control and a wife that has a lot of hangups about sex. Also shes the type that isnt interested when shes stressed and shes always stressed. I did all I could to try and make her life less stressful and she would just take on more responsibilities she shouldnt. Shes a people pleaser except when it comes to me.
Mid-50’s hormone issues with my SO… all initmacy stopped except obligatory BJ’s maybe once every 3 months…. Then that trailed off and she started drinking and weed use more heavily…. I lost respect for her, and eventually asked her to move out. Been almost three yrs now, no contact.
I’m super happy that I ended the slow dumpster fire that was our life at that point.
we didn’t have long-term sexual chemistry.
There’s something called “The Marriage Wheel.” Look it up, our story is not unique.
No one picked wrong, no one ignored more red flags than usual, it’s just simple biology. Nothing lasts forever. It’s crazy how fast you can go from soaking the sheets and fucking up the mattress to taking a back seat to a romance novel.
Once you understand the truth your ego doesn’t hurt anymore. Even if you traveled back in time and pinpointed the moment, you could never stop it.
She just spent all her time on her phone. Didn’t communicate properly, was really messy, couldn’t make any plans for the future and blamed her anxiety and then whenever we would discuss anything she would shout and lecture me and couldn’t have a discussion about anything nearing political…she was very pretty, but revealed something ugly which I didn’t find attractive.
Thankfully no kids and I was able to leave and move on.
She just stopped.
Won’t discuss why.
Denies that it’s a dead bedroom.
Every time I try to engage a discussion, I get, “That’s a really good question.”
No shit, that’s probably why I asked it. No answer as of yet. Going on 6 years of this.
No idea. We’ve had ebbs and flows, kids, married for decades, etc. All of the sudden 2 years ago, it went from once a week to once every 6-8 months. Try to talk about it and that goes nowhere. I get tired of consistently getting rejected and just quit trying and then will try again for a bit and just get rejected all over again.
I’ll never stop telling her that she beautiful, sexy, and complimenting what she is wearing and how she makes me feel, but doing date nights, vacations away from kids and all that stuff is a hard thing to get motivated to organize now.
I used to do that stuff a lot and my memories of those moments are never about being intimate but somehow it plays a part and I struggle to spend time/money researching and planning now. (Even though I do have two events for this summer, including going to see her favorite band.)
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She is 5’2 and went from 130 lbs to 189. Big belly etc. became lazy and inactive. Claimed she was eating from stress from her friends stress. Me I’ve always been the athletic one and stayed in shape. I get mistaken for 40 and I’m 59. She gets mistaken for 65 and she is 59.
Lead did.
The emotional, physical, and romantic effort was very one sided for a long time. We talked about it, but nothing changed. Eventually I stopped trying to see if she would notice or step up. She didn’t. Divorced now.
Almost as soon as we got married my wife got sick and with the constant surgries we never really got to develope that part of the relationship. It doesn’t help seeing her struggle daily to find the energy to do small things around the house, just in a constant state of fatigue and pain. Seeing what this dieseas has done to her body with all the scars and tumors and weight gain it’s kind of a constant reminder.
Avoided dating sluts. Turns out that women who aren’t into sex aren’t into sex.
My wife straight up told me that she had her 2 kids a d that’s what she wanted, that women only have sex with men as a means to getting them to marry them then get pregnant, and now that that goal has been achieved, sex no longer serves a purpose. We still do it from time to time, maybe 2 times a month if I’m lucky. It’s always initiated by me and if she wants it but I don’t initiate I get fallout of her being upset for several days for not wanting her. But if I do try and she doesn’t want it I’m a hound dog asshole only chasing sex and only doing things like watching TV with her just so I’ll get sex.
I’ve learned I’m always wrong, it doesn’t matter what I do I’m wrong, and if I try to talk to other people about this I’m wrong, so I just accept that anything I want or desire or is important for me to feel happy is wrong. Someday soon hopefully disease will take me and my wife can use the insurance money to find happiness with a different man and the kids can be looked after.
Venlaflaxine!
In my experience it’s always ended up being one of two things. Either she was cheating on me or started taking antidepressants.
She had too many restrictions on sex in the first place.
Only at night when we were going to bed.
Only when her daughter wasn’t at the house. Which meant at best we were looking at only being able to have sex every other Saturday night. And if she didn’t have her daughter we had to go to the club so she could dance. So, by the time we got home, i was mentally and physically exhausted.
Only in bed.
Only missionary or doggy. Two positions that do nothing for me.
She wouldn’t touch my penis.
On top of all of that, she was very insecure because her ex-husband cheated on her constantly. To the point that if we went out shopping and an attractive woman walked in front of us, she would get pissed and start a fight with me because “i was looking at the woman.”
None of this happened until after we moved in together. So after having a somewhat normal sex life, because she’d go out of her way to have someone watch her daughter so we could have time together, to constantly being rejected, i quit trying because she constantly said no to sex. And she put in no effort to have sex if i didn’t try to initiate.