She lost sexual attraction...

[Benji]

Hi all, I’ve been reading the forum and threads related to my sitch, and realized that people here are very knowledgeable, experienced and very friendly and ready to help. I really appreciate the fact that in these crazy times there are still good people in this world that do good deeds without gaining anything material in return. You are fantastic!

I am going through a pretty hard period, which is probably expected since I am posting here. This might end up being a pretty long message for which I apologize up front, but I think some details are needed to give proper insight in what is happening - and give you some material to be able to answer my questions and provide some suggestions on the best next steps.

I am 33 years old, my W is 35. We’ve been together for more than 10 years, lived together for 6 years, 4 years married. We have a 2 year old D.

Our relationship started in a tough period for both of us - we both were “fresh” out of longer relationships, in our early 20s, with those relationships being our single “serious” experiences, especially in terms of sex. I could see that from the beginning, as she was pretty reserved and “stiff” when we started getting intimate. I was also still recovering from my previous relationship, so our sexual life was pretty rocky from the first day - after a few unsuccessful attempts due to my inability to relax and get things going, we finally were able to make a breakthrough, and start our sexual connection besides the emotional “brakes” that existed at the beginning. And honestly, the sex in the beginning was nothing special - at least compared to my previous experience. She did not seem to enjoy it at all - wanted it to start fast and end fast. So I raised it at some point with her - and she opened up saying that her previous BF of 3 years never cared about if she was enjoying, was pretty self-centered in bed, and sex was just something she was doing with him to keep things moving forward as she was young and thought that he is a good guy to be with. And she admitted never having an orgasm with this guy. I was shocked. So I started working on it, giving special attention of doing things a bit slower, relaxing her, pleasing her in different ways until our sex became great - both of us enjoying, having orgasms often and being happy most of the times. But even then, I would somehow say that it was never about sex when it comes to two of us. Everything else was more important than it - as we turned out to be extremely compatible in every other aspect of life. We are both educated, hedonists, like traveling, eating great food, enjoying music and art, developing our careers etc, so we had a blast. Nobody seemed to mind the “lack” of the sexual moment, even though it wasn’t actually lacking, just not being the focus of our relations.

Our friends would always label us as a perfect couple - and somehow I always thought we are exactly that. We were always exchanging smiles, touches, kisses, and expressing love to each other. Of course, we had our ups and downs, as each two adults will if they spend so much time together, but nothing too serious. The only sitch when I actually questioned our future happened some 5-6 years ago when I was going through a rough period at work - so I started visiting a therapist to fight my later diagnosed “light general anxiety disorder”. I was never on any medication, managed to cope through all of that just by reading, exercising and talking to the therapist and my wife. She was supportive, but at one point started questioning if I am the person she fell in love with in the beginning or someone else who became depressed and ready to give up. This really gave me a strong moral boost - I prioritized getting better, and really did. I worked out, lost weight, started exponentially excelling at work. Everything got back to normal - or not just normal, even better than before.

She had a rough phase as well a year after me, when she wanted a career switch. I supported that completely so we overcame that fairly quickly. She started a new job after less than a year of learning her new skills and being unemployed, and has been excelling since. I am so proud of her. She is still making significantly less money than I am, but that was never important as she never lacked anything with me.

And while all of this was happening, our SL was getting a bit sidelined, in terms of not really trying anything new. It became pretty straightforward - usually over the weekends, when we aren’t working, we have sex in our bedroom. We start with oral foreplay, and end up with a few regular positions. So pretty much never being spontaneous like doing it in the kitchen, toilet, car or trying anything new. No quickies during work week. Just weekends. But pretty regular weekend sex. I raised it first, roughly 4 years ago. The feedback I got was - “This is not a problem for me, we were never spontaneous anyway. I am not that much of a sexual person, I am pretty ok with not being too creative, and the sex we have is enough for me. Both in terms of quantity and quality”. And I felt the same to be honest. I didn’t need more. So we concluded that we don’t really have a problem.

As a side note - for some reason, I am usually pretty attractive to women. I am not an extremely beautiful or handsome guy - but I have decent looks. Tall, used to be athletic, still muscular even though I gained some weight. Pretty successful at what I do, dress well, eloquent and extrovert. So I’ve had my chances of “doing something naughty on the side”... Multiple times. From colleagues at work openly flirting, to actually even getting open offers for “one-night-stand” at business conferences or parties. Never even for a moment considered any of those. Because honestly, my MR was so perfect to me, I did not want to jeopardize it in any possible way. I did not need that. Were those women sexually attractive to me? Yes. But not worth it.

Even when sex became even more seldom, some 3 years ago… Like once/2 weeks, or sometimes once a month. We talked about it (I was the one raising it first again), we both agreed that it would be nice if we could do it more often as before, but that nobody feels too bad about it and we shouldn’t treat this as a “must”. Let’s try and see what happens. Not really a problem. For a short period of time we had sex every weekend again. It was decent, as before. Nothing new, just standard sex that we both seem to enjoy. Then she got pregnant with our D. I had a block for some reason when she started having the “tummy”. She wasn’t any less attractive to me, but some irrational fear of hurting the baby would work its way into me, and I just was not able. So we had a “sex-less” period of around 6 months. After the birth, as soon as the doctor gave us green light, we started having sex again. She was a bit shy initially, claiming that she hates her body after giving birth. For me - something wonderful happened after the birth. She became 10 times more attractive to me, with all those tiny imperfections that pregnancy brought. This led to sex being better than ever for me - lasting longer, both having orgasms pretty regularly. At least that’s what it looked to me. After a few months we got back to our schedule of having sex once per month…

And that continued until this very day. The only change I recently noticed is that she would react if I gave here some “naughty” touches during the day, or insinuating sex. At first I thought it might be due to our D being there sometimes. Everything else was perfect - enjoying life as before, now even as a family of three, I was so happy...

But something was still really bugging me - why do we have sex just once a month when it is actually good? And she is very attractive to me now, more than before - and I’ve even told her this several times, to help here overcome her uncertainties as well as since this was absolutely true. And why does she seem to be avoiding my touches and calls for sex recently? So I asked her… And that is when IT all started…

She opened up to me. Saying that she has been seeing us more as “brother and sister” than “man and woman” for more than 3 years now, even from a bit before the pregnancy. That she does not feel sexual attraction for me any more. That sex itself is not necessarily bad or an act of suffering for her when it happens, but that anything before that is very hard. Getting ready for it, doing it for the sake of being a “good wife”, and all that leads to the sex itsellf is a struggle for her. And when we get there, it always starts with me orally pleasing her - she says that every time this happens the start is very rough for her as she feels guilt and awkwardness due to lack of that sexual attraction. Then when she gets “horny” after a few minutes of keeping her eyes shut, she pushes through it and sometimes even enjoys the rest of it, sometimes even has an orgasm, but still it results in her not really wanting this sincerely, and sometimes just acting that she enjoys. That sometimes she even cries secretly afterwards. That she loves me but is very afraid of all of this, feels lost and like this is something she has no idea how to cope with. That she was planning never to tell me anything about it and just continue living with it, hoping it never becomes so big of an issue to break us apart, as she loves me very much and believes everything else in our MR is just perfect. She even mentioned she was thinking how she might be ready at some point in the future if this continued to give me green light to find some OP on the side to please me sexually, if I am able to do it discreetly and with nobody else knowing.

I was devastated (still pretty much am, but after reading a lot of stuff here I feel a lot better). At the start, I started questioning everything in my mind. Do those gentle kisses and touches that she likes she actually doesn’t like? Is she acting every time she is having an orgasm? Is there someone else? If not now, was there someone else before? I don’t really want any other women, if I wanted I would have done it multiple times...

I took a deep breath, and started asking some of these questions. She seemed very confused, stressed and was always on the brink of crying. She claims she has no idea why and how this started. The only thing she knows that added to it is the fact that I am making some sex-related jokes that are a really a turn-off for her, and that we have started being too close in terms of nobody really having any privacy at home (going to toilet with open doors, seeing our worst sides when someone is ill or going through hard times etc). She didn’t explicitly say if there was anyone else at any point, but indirectly I got the impression that there wasn’t an actual affair, but that she might have sensed sexual attraction to someone else. But in the last couple of months she lacks sexual urge generally, and doesn’t even have a need to please herself.

She also said that she is afraid that this thing might ruin us as she doesn’t know if she is able to revive this attraction, and that this might be a pandora’s box that we don’t want to touch. That it might be the best just to ignore it all and not make a big thing out of it, as everything else is perfect and we love each other so much. I told her that after me now knowing all of this - there is no return. She then agreed and started crying. She immediately said that she wants to do everything possible to strengthen our MR and resolve this. We immediately concluded that we should probably seek professional help. I quickly found a renown Marriage Therapist, and made an appointment which is due to happen in a few weeks from now.

We agreed to try and not talk too much about this before we start therapy, as she is afraid she might say some things in a “wrong way”, so I can misunderstand them and get my ego hurt even more, taking us a step further from getting this resolved. So now we both hope that actually tackling this with professional assistance will help us in recovering our MR and getting it back on track.

But I am not sure if this is the right way to do it? Or should I try and get to know as much as possible before even going to the Therapy? Because obviously from her fears there is a lot more that she hasn’t yet shared… Should I openly question if there was or is any OM? I really don’t see how this could have happened considering our daily routines, but reading through a lot of threads here and on other websites, somehow these things usually end up being a combination of two people not working on their sexuality in marriage, and W then falling for someone else in the meantime. I think I can live with not knowing more until we actually start talking about this with the Therapist, but wanted to check if you think this is actually the best way to go, or should I continue digging and asking her before starting the Therapy?

And does this seem like a sitch that is possible to resolve, considering that it was happening for so long without me even noticing how much it escalated? I am really ready to do anything that needs to be done - as I don’t really want to think about finding someone else to spend my life with. But I also don’t want us to stay in a MR where one or both of us are suffering and are timed bombs… It hurts extremely even thinking about ending the MR, and I really hope this will not happen.

Thank you all, any thoughts and advice are extremely appreciated!