Sexless Relationship

Ammanda says...

The fury, frustration, disappointment, and underlying sadness you feel leaps off the screen and many people will identify with your situation. Probably, some will agree with your basic premise that men get ‘the blame’ for sexless relationships. However, whilst I can’t speak for other therapists, I would hazard a guess that most of them would conclude that relationships are complex and the reasons people do or don’t engage in certain aspects, like sex, for example, are more complex still.

The tone of your letter suggests that sex has become a bargaining tool – albeit one that’s failed – but an “I’m doing all this for you providing you give me sex” scenario, nonetheless. Now, for the avoidance of all doubt, my comment isn’t about blame. I think the approach you’ve taken is understandable. You would like to have a sexual relationship with your wife whom you love madly. Nothing wrong with that. It seems you’ve looked around and heard from various sources that women are more likely to respond to sexual invitations if their partners recognize and proactively support the stressful lives that many women lead. Looking after kids, working, cleaning, sorting stuff out and the like all take their toll. Being able to mutually negotiate what it is that helps each partner to feel loved and valued usually contributes to each partner getting some of their needs met certainly some of the time. But this only works when there are some basics in place. Trust, feeling able to be vulnerable and not taken advantage of plus a willingness to acknowledge each other’s point of view all contribute to couples working through difficult problems.

From what you say though it sounds like none of the above are working very well. I’m wondering what things have been like in the past. When did your wife decide she wasn’t interested? Has she ever been interested? Can you think of anything that might have been influential for her? How did you talk together about your sex and intimacy if and when it’s worked OK previously? What might your wife be saying if it was her who had written to me rather than you? All these questions are important because they provide an opportunity for reflection and may lay the foundations for a different type of conversation with your wife. Very often in situations like this, couples get into a particular pattern of communication. Each knows how the other will respond to the argument in question but neither feels able to change the conversation because to do so may feel too exposing and potentially likely to make things feel much worse.

Sex ebbs and flows in most committed relationships. That’s because life happens to people, and other things get prioritised. Depending on where you might be on the life cycle that could be having babies and young children, when the most important thing often feels like getting some sleep rather than anything else, through to health issues that impact on both energy and drive. For some, the sexual barometer goes up and down depending on how the relationship feels. Sometimes, withholding sex is the only way someone believes they have of explaining to a partner how unhappy they are and that perhaps change of whatever description needs to happen. Sometimes too, sex simply becomes less important or not important at all and that’s what your wife is saying to you now. So basically, there may be an underlying reason why she feels as she does that has not yet been aired or it may be as she says, that sex has no significance for her and therefore she won’t be engaging. Obviously, that leaves you in a very difficult place because wanting to have a sexual relationship with a partner is normal. The problem is that for some people, so is not wanting to have one. That’s what both of you need to explore.

I don’t know what help you’ve accessed so far, it sounds like none at all and if that’s the case I would urge you both to see a sex and relationship therapist who may be able to create a better space for each of you to discuss what’s going on. A therapist won’t tell your wife she should have sex with you, nor will they tell you to put up with nothing. My hope would be that together you work on what this is really all about. That might in the end require making some very painful decisions but at least you will be making them not based on what you feel therapists tell men to do but on a shared understanding of two individuals who can recognize and acknowledge each other’s position and that something needs to change, even if that means letting go of the relationship.