I can almost GUARANTEE that this is the case. It is very much so for my H. I am a near WAW and we are in MC right now, discussing all of our marital issues....this is by far what my H considers his biggest "failure" and area of concern and insecurity.
My H's libido, in my observation, has always been low. We have been married for 20 years. Even as a younger man with a pretty, young "trophy" bride, he was happy with a ML frequency of 2X/month...I was devastated!! But I just bit my lip for years, assuming that he didn't love me very much or that I wasn't as attractive to him as his porn magazines--HA!
You HAVE to get him talking about this to address it. Our MC is NOT a sex therapist--I tried, and couldn't find anyone in our area that took any insurance at all, let alone mine--but this guy is working on our WHOLE dysfunctional couple dynamic. Of course, this subject is at the top of the list.
Will your H go to counseling? You've GOT to do it!!
I know the basic concept of the Five Love Languages, but I've never read the book or taken the test. Keeping that in mind, three possibilities come immediately to mind when you say your husband has little interest in sex but self-reports as a primary "touch" person on this Five LL test:
1. Maybe the test doesn't accurately test what you think it does . . it is after all just a quiz out of a self-help book, right?
2. Maybe the test is right, and he's a touch person, but other factors prevent him from wanting sex.
3. Maybe he took the test in your presence (or knew you would see the outcome) and gave the answers he thought you would want to see. Those answers made him look like touch was his primary language because he tried to give you answers that he thought would please you (or at least, numbers that would minimize the confrontation over his answers.)
My wife's individual sex therapist/doctor told her that the principal reason that older women (who have no medical problems) don't have sex with their husbands is because they are deeply angry at their husbands about something that happened long ago. She then said that if you are really angry with someone and don't want to forgive them, the last thing you want to do is have sex with them, even if you love them.
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is this the answer to the reason why wives don't want to have sex with their husbands? could it be because a husband pissed their wife off too many times that the can't forgive, so they cut sex off, yet go through life as if nothing is wrong, but when the husband wants sex they say no?
then if that's the case, and if the wife is angry, and can't forgive, why stay married? who wants to be married to a woman who can't forgive and lives a facade?
It's one answer. I would be wary of considering it the one answer, especially if it encourages you to think there's going to be one or two big events that you can find, resolve and then have a normal sex life after a sex-starved marriage.
Even if the process started with something that made her angry ten years ago, the effect of that event has now been developing over the years and a lot of other factors have developed in that time, guaranteed.
3. Maybe he took the test in your presence (or knew you would see the outcome) and gave the answers he thought you would want to see. Those answers made him look like touch was his primary language because he tried to give you answers that he thought would please you (or at least, numbers that would minimize the confrontation over his answers.)
Well, I had already taken the "wives" quiz (the book has two quizzes, one for each person.) So my answers were visible.
If he wants to please me, that's nice, but being dishonest doesn't help. If all he wanted was to avoid a confrontation, or avoid talking about it....I don't get that at all.
People here keep telling me he may not be happy about our lack of sex. But if that's true, why doesn't he try harder to change it? I can't help thinking one of these things might be true:
1) Long term relationships really do get de-sexualized, and there's nothing you can do about it.
2) DH has a low sex drive, but wants me for some other reason. I don't have any money and I'm not exactly the domestic type of woman....so what on earth does he want me for, if he doesn't want sex?
3) Maybe he's not really happy w/ me, but thinks he can't do any better? or it would be too much hassle to break up with me and be single again?
I. Just. Don't. Get it. He says he loves me...says we're together forever...but we rarely have sex and have lived the same way, same routines, for years now. Is this how long-term relationships are supposed to be, and I'm just having unreasonable expectations? He is my best friend, and I do love him. I just thought it would be more passionate than this.
He hasn't been very receptive to my efforts to add some excitement to our life together. Maybe he WANTS our life together to be sort of bland?
Consider someone who's overweight. Does she *want* to be overweight? Probably not, right? Does she realize when she eats pancakes for breakfast that she's helping herself gain weight, not lose? Probably, right? And yet she continues to do it. She may do it because she doesn't understand the consequence of what she does. She may realize that pancakes are fattening, but think that she's only having a few and it shouldn't be a big deal. She may think she'll start doing the right thing tomorrow or the next day. She may be so deep in the habit of it that she doesn't even think about what she's doing until after she's done it (I've had to break the habit of fast food in the car because, frankly, I would stop off for a cheeseburger or two at times when I wasn't hungry at all--and when I'd be home in less than an hour with healthy food options. Sometimes finding myself munching a cheeseburger from the drive-through feels a little like waking up--I feel like I'm suddenly back in control of my actions. Habits are powerful.)
Or, as you say, maybe he wants a bland, fat-and-happy coexistence with a roommate-like partner. I don't think that's very likely, because asexual people exist but are fairly rare, but it's possible.
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If he wants to please me, that's nice, but being dishonest doesn't help. If all he wanted was to avoid a confrontation, or avoid talking about it....I don't get that at all.
No, it doesn't help. In fact, it makes things worse, and you're lucky that at least one of you got fed up enough to push for confrontation before you reached a stage of resentment that would have pushed you toward immediate divorce instead of books and discussions. A lot of people don't manage that, and when they eventually decide they've had enough and decide to do something about it, they start by having an affair or moving out.
But that doesn't mean that he understands what's at stake yet, or that he will be happy at being prodded out of his groove. He may be (or think he is) comfortable in the routine of your marriage, even if not as happy as he could be. In reality, if it's gone on for years, it's not even "his" groove. It's "your" groove, as in both of you. He may resent the fact that the two of you bumped along more-or-less comfortably in a predictable rut and now, one day, you've decided all of a sudden and all on your own that you aren't satisfied with that anymore--and now he has to choose between growing and changing on the one hand, or losing the marriage on the other (fast or slow, but inevitable.)
If he can avoid confrontation long enough, and if you turn out to be willing to avoid it, too (and you have in the past, right?) then the comfortable rut can go on. He might not be exactly happy, and you certainly won't be, but he won't have to face that fact, you see? Like the man who won't go to the doctor because he suspects he'll be told he has cancer, your husband may just not want to face bad news or a challenge. He may think he's not up to it.
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People here keep telling me he may not be happy about our lack of sex. But if that's true, why doesn't he try harder to change it?
I posted a similar question here almost two years ago now, and I was given the same answer I now have to give you: If you figure it out, tell me right away. In my case, my wife insisted that she was attracted to me, and that I was attractive, and that she did find me attractive, etc. etc. etc. This after years of monthly sex stretching out to entire years without sex between us! My question was, if you find me so attractive, and we married each other and committed our lives to each other, and here we are in bed together, then why are you pushing me away instead of kissing me back? It didn't make any logical sense. The truth was that she didn't want sex and she wasn't sexually attracted to me, but that answer wasn't the end.
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1) Long term relationships really do get de-sexualized, and there's nothing you can do about it.
This is not true. I can tell you that because I've done something about it. That doesn't mean that every relationship can be changed the same way, but they can be changed. If nothing else, you can do something about it by ending the relationship, although that's a last resort. The catch is that often, in order to comfort themselves about the routine they've allowed to develop, people tell themselves that this is true. They see it acted out on TV, in movies, in books and songs, so they have a lot of justification. But this is like a 30-year-old man who insists that "everyone gains weight as they get older!" Many people do, and many people don't, and even those who do don't necessarily become obese. Yes, many long-term relationships do get bland and lose passion, but that's not inevitable at all. It's what the people in those marriages chose by accepting it.
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2) DH has a low sex drive, but wants me for some other reason. I don't have any money and I'm not exactly the domestic type of woman....so what on earth does he want me for, if he doesn't want sex?
Maybe he wants connection to you because you're interesting, or funny, or because you show him affection. Maybe he's showing you affection in another way (and it may not fit neatly into one of the LL categories.) Maybe he feels the way my wife did; she told me "I just don't want sex. I don't want sex with anyone. I just don't feel that about people anymore. But I love you and I want to live with you forever." Ironically, we think that hearing this should be reassuring--because it should be an ego stroke that he/she loves you and wants you, right? And it makes the sexual mismatch "their problem." It makes it seem almost like the HD spouse is normal and the LD spouse has some sort of problem. But what it really means if and when you get that kind of declaration is that you have a choice between accepting this state of affairs--forever--or taking the chance that insisting on more will lead to the end of the marriage. They're really saying that they want to have it both ways; all the affection and caring of being married to you without the intimacy and hard work of finding the sexual spark between you. That implies that there's a risk to pushing forward and standing up for yourself.
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3) Maybe he's not really happy w/ me, but thinks he can't do any better? or it would be too much hassle to break up with me and be single again?
Certainly there are people in that situation. But you'll find out, if you continue to stand up for yourself. By refusing to accept limitations like the lack of intimacy between you, you're giving him excuses to break up (essentially, you're raising the amount of trouble to stay in the marriage, so the amount of trouble involved in leaving becomes comparatively less and less. He may eventually decide that it's just as much work to stay as it is to leave. When that happens, I'm betting you'll find that he wasn't with you out of convenience--and remember, if he cares for you, you are going to be increasing the intimacy between you--in other words, you're going to show him how much better it could be between you. If he sees that and still decides he was only there for the convenience, there's not much you can do--but that's not very likely. You will have to have the confidence to understand that you're a lovely, attractive woman and intimacy with you (not just talking about sex here!) is an attractive proposition that your man will be hard put to give up--once he understands that he actually will have to give it up unless you get more intimacy with him. Right now he probably thinks he can have his cake and eat it too--that he can deny you intimacy without completely losing you.
Do you know the old legend about how to boil a live frog?
You've done a good thing by reading the love languages book, and I assume you've read The Sex-Starved Marriage or you wouldn't be here. Have you read Passionate Marriage? I didn't read it until we had been trying together for over a year and a half, and although I got a lot out of it, I think it would have helped me back when I was where you are now--starting out and dealing with the uncertainty over whether your spouse will work with you. I recommend it.
I think you'll like it, for the most part. Even the ideas that might make you a little uncomfortable with your own role in your marriage are done in a kind way to soften the blow a little, which is good.
Scharch had several main ideas that I thought were really important:
1. Almost no one stops desiring sex randomly for no reason. People who don't want to have sex with their spouses have their reasons. However, often, neither party wants to know the reasons because it's scary. But never assume that a SSM comes from the LD partner having some sort of nebulous "problem" and being abnormal. There's a reason. Count on it.
2. Marriage is hard, and it's supposed to be hard, and it would never work if it were easy. It's ok to wish it were easy, but it's ok that it's not. Marriage should involve what feel like crises, and a big part of making a marriage work is lasting long enough to understand that your marriage is not ending every time there's a big fundamental conflict--those are normal and if you get through this one there will be more in the future.
3. Building on #2, marriage is a "marriage crucible" that will make you better and stronger if you work at it--but it will hurt along the way. A lot. It's not painless and it's not easy. There will be easy, joyful, painless periods, but if you try to preserve those forever and avoid strife and conflict, you will stagnate and the marriage will die.
When you do get out of the Mutual Depression cycle, it is wonderful. I could have been you as recently as last year.
He may have thought that he was being empathetic when he said you looked pathetic. I have messed up that badly and so has my wife. We're doing better now. It hasn't been easy but it has been so worth it.
