My wife and I are 30 years old with three sons--two 12-year-olds and a baby. We adopted the twins about six years ago. The biggest issue, by far, in our marriage is sex. Simply put, I'd like to have some sometime and she would not.
We have gone as long as six months to a year without sex in the past, and it's not quite that bad now. We usually get one time per month. She insists that this has nothing to do with hormones or her menstrual cycle, but I've actually marked a calendar and you could predict moon phases by it. She rejects me for weeks, then initiates sex on a night of her choosing, usually by going to bed naked. I always go along with this, figuring there's no advantage to be gained by rejecting her for revenge. We have sex one time, she expresses great enjoyment and deep satisfaction, we snuggle and drift off to sleep. But for me, this is like a kid on Christmas morning with all the presents opened; it was great, but I know it's going to be a long time before it happens again, and I'm going to be rejected many times between now and then.
I feel hurt by her rejection, and I know I'm angry and irritable. I've talked very openly with her, and she with me, but I'm not seeing changes. Right now, I'm trying to go for a month without saying or doing anything sexually suggestive. I admit I constantly touch her sexually, say sexual things, and ask for sex. I know I pester her, so I'm trying to stop that and see what happens. I'm almost two weeks in. She's noticed that something positive (from her point of view) is happening, but there's no indication of any desire returning so far. My (irrational?) fear is that she'll decide she likes the new asexual eunuch/husband version of me and I'll be an even bigger disappointment to her if I decide not to be this sexless guy anymore. Not talking to her about what I'm doing is the worst.
Some ideas on why we're having this problem:
We've both gained a LOT of weight since we met. Stressful jobs, kids--all the excuses. I find her irrestible. She finds me resistible. I lost over 100 pounds two years ago, but it made no lasting difference in our sex life and I gained it back.
Our house is a wreck. We bought a 100-year-old money pit thinking we'd take our time and restore it--and then we took on the twins, and we were just trying to survive. Recently I completed a nursery for the baby and two new bathrooms are coming, but our bedroom is a disaster and constantly cluttered. I know that's not romantic, but I don't know what she wants me to do about it when she has four other rooms plus the outdoors she wants me to handle first. When I finished the nursery, framed, wired, insulated, glazed, drywalled, paneled, doored, floored, trimmed and painted by myself, her comment was "I didn't think you'd be able to do it."
She's struggled with depression. She won't see a therapist, but whenever sex comes up, depression comes out. She has medication from her general practitioner, which I find wacky. I wish she'd see a doctor who specializes in the brain if she thinks there's a problem in the brain.
I can't help but be enraged by her rejection--it seems so willful. She enjoys sex so much (or pretends?) on the rare occasions we have it, but the next day it's back to the ice. I've seen versions of Michele's "Just do it" advice before, and it made sense to me, so I've asked her many times to give me three minutes to try to CHANGE her mood. She let me try it once; she went wild, we had great sex, she loved every moment (or pretended?) and promptly went back to rejecting me. She's never let me try that since.
I'd honestly like to be less angry at her, and I'm trying, but it's hard. The best example I can think of is the year she gave me one of those silly "I Owe You" sex coupon books you get in gag stores for Christmas. I guess she thought it was a funny joke to give her sex-starved husband a book of promises about sex, but I took her seriously. At that time we hadn't had sex for about six months. I brought it to her, and the first thing she did was go through the book--which she hadn't read before giving it to me--and tell me which pages she wasn't going to do . . . sex in the backyard, a couple of others. Well, OK, not much in the spirit, but fair enough, especially since our backyard fence is chain link. Over the next two years, I brought that book to her dozens of times. I tried to use the coupons for sex, for a shower together, for a backrub . . . . eventually, out of sheer desperation, I tried every one.
In the end I burned the damn thing. I don't really know why she gave it to me. She couldn't bring herself to honor one single coupon out of that stupid gag gift. I don't know whether she intended to honor it when she gave it to me, but I can't fathom why she would:
1. Give me such a gift, knowing how depressed I already was by her constant rejection, if she was going to treat it as a joke, or 2. Give me such a gift, intending to let me use it to spark sex between us, and then be so disgusted by me that she couldn't even bring herself to give me a backrub.
I have never cheated and will never cheat. I don't want a divorce. I don't want another woman. I want to make love to my wife. I love her and I promised her my whole life, and I will give it to her. That said, it kills me that she's set this Catch-22 trap for me. I can't have sex with any other woman because I loved her so much that I was eager to stand up and forswear all other women forever. This is a big thing to promise if you think about it. I'll never make love to a redhead or a blonde. I'll never make love to a woman with a southern accent, or small breasts, or freckles, or any other feature my wife doesn't have--but I was willing to give up all the possibilities out there because I thought, in return, I would get to be with her. Now I find that I don't get to be with her. I get to be the good father to our kids, and I get to be the good handyman who restores her dream house for her, and I get to drive the junk car so she can drive the car she wants. These are all things I WANT to do, but I can't help but notice that it seems like it only matters that I want to do them because she wants me to do them too. I never wanted to be her roommate.
Over the next two years, I brought that book to her dozens of times. I tried to use the coupons for sex, for a shower together, for a backrub . . . . eventually, out of sheer desperation, I tried every one.