I posted this in the newcomers forum yesterday, but upon reading some of the posts I've decided that this forum is more appropriate. I'm hoping that I can get some advice and support from people who have been in my shoes. I happened upon the first chapter of "The Sex-Starved Marriage" online, and it described my marriage situation so well that I ran out and bought the book right away. I finished reading it within two days and I'm now trying to apply some of the things that I've learned from the book.

I'm 34 years old and my wife is 37. We've been married for 6 years and have two beautiful daughters, ages 5 and 2. We're both attractive professionals with good jobs, a nice home, and generally speaking, a very good life. We dated for 3 years prior to getting married and we were very much in love with each other. Our sex life was great and she made me feel like the most special person in the world. She seemed to love sex, kissing, cuddling, romance, etc. just as much as I did. Three months after getting married my wife got pregnant. We hadn't planned it, but once the initial shock wore off I think we were both ready to be parents. After our daughter was born, our sex life dwindled away pretty rapidly. Soon to follow was everything else even remotely romantic. We still said "I love you" and would occasionally hold hands if at a movie, etc., but that was about it. Everything else completely stopped - kissing, cuddling of any kind - basically anything that involved touching each other. This bothered me a lot, but I knew that it was not unusual after the birth of a child. However, our lack of intimacy eventually became extreme. I think we probably went at least a year without sex during this period. I let my wife know how unhappy this made me, which led to an argument and made things worse. This cycle continued until we decided to have our second child. Unfortunately - from my standpoint anyway - we had sex twice and she was pregnant again. Throughout the pregnancy my wife was sick almost daily, which prevented us from having any kind of a sex life. After the birth of our second daughter the drought continued. From the time of our daughter's conception we went more than two years without sex. Finally last August we had sex and it appeared that things were improving. Since then (it's now March) we've probably had sex 5 or 6 times - the last of which was a month ago. But the sex we've had has lacked passion - no foreplay, no kissing, etc. And in between our infrequent sexual encounters there has been no romance or touching of any kind.

I love my wife so much and we actually get along extremely well with the exception of our issues concerning sex and intimacy. I don't think she understands that my concerns are not primarily about sex, but about my desire to be close to her. Although I miss sex terribly, it hurts me even more that she hasn't kissed me romantically in years. When I've let her know how that makes me feel, she acts like I'm being ridiculous and that there's no way she could possibly bring herself to kiss me. I honestly don't want her to kiss me or have sex with me when she doesn't want to - I just want her to want me again. I'm miserable with the way things have been. I'm trying very hard right now to be the perfect husband, but I can only go so long without some positive reinforcement before I get depressed and eventually say something to her, which always starts the argument again and makes things worse. Any advice would be much appreciated. I realize I've gone on for a long time here, but I'd be glad to give additional details if they would be helpful.