I feel for you, man -- really, I do. But I think you have to decide whether or not you can live like this, and if so, for how long. Because there's a very real possibility that this is "the new normal" for your wife.
There's an old joke that goes "I want sex 6-8x per month and my wife wants it once per month, so we compromised . . . we have sex once per month."
There's a lot of truth in that. The low-drive partner will always dictate the pace (or lack thereof) of the marriage's sex life. Each partner needs to decide what they can abide, and what they can't. Unless there's an underlying medical cause, or other marital problems impacting the SL, rarely do these things change much, in my experience.
But as I've said before, I may be the cynical "low test score" you want to throw out on this subject.
For the record, I don't think you're being unfair here. If your wife's primary LL was, say, "quality time," I don't think anyone would fairly suggest that she "just get over it" if you withheld quality time from her for six months.
Starsky
I think that's what I'm really afraid of. How much can I take? I don't think it's sex twice a year, that's all. Michele (and everyone else) suggests sex less than ten times a year or so is sexless.
And I don't want that.
And I can't handle that.
It's not that I'm unwilling to change or understand that libidos drop as we age or other things, but yes, sex is very important to me.
I knew sex was important enough to me that it had to be part of my partnership. I knew I wasn't willing to take the risk of a sexless marriage by being with a partner with no sex drive.
And that's the rub-------I made sure that wasn't the case and that my wife liked sex often and didn't have any weird hang-ups that might signal she would not have a sex drive. My wife loved sex. To me, that was great. I can handle her past sex life and previous marriage. Frankly, it helped reinforce that the need for sex I knew I had before proposing marriage was more than just ok---it was a mutually beneficial part of our relationship.
And then we married, and now it's not a mutually beneficial part of our relationship, I'm looking a sexless marriage and I'm afraid the reality is I can't do it. I love her. She loves me. And I can't live in a sexless marriage.
I guess that's something I have to think a lot more about over the next six months. I like the joke, but having sex once per month is too little for me. I know that now. I don't know what that says about me, but I'm afraid I do know what that says about us.
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(I have gone through some physical "female" issues myself and I did NOT want to share these with my H because I felt it would be a turn-off. It made for some weird times.)
I'm still waiting to see if she shares something with you when she feels it's safe to do so. I hope I'm right because perhaps it will be something transient and fixable by medical means.
She's shared a lot. Even I have been surprised, but she does and I love her for that. She felt safe enough to sit down and talk to me about it, only what she said wasn't that she feels bad or lost her sex drive or needs x or doesn't get enough y, etc. I wrote about some of those times before just so we know we're on the same page about her ability to talk to me. I sincerely, truly believe she feels she can (and does) talk to me about even her medical issues. Also, she's more comfortable and aware than most about people about having physiological conversations, probably a result of the cancer.
A caveat, I grew up in medicine, studied medicine, worked in clinics and hopsitals but abandoned medicine in 2001 for my art career. No, that doesn't mean I know everyithing about women and menopause or anything my wife is every going through, but between what I've learned, what I've seen, what I've been told, and observations about my wife, I don't think it's illogical to at least suggest my wife is not having female problems or physical changes that would be a turn off for me.
