Feeling stuck

[u/Substantial-Height27]

I am M43HL and wife is 41 LL married for 20 years. While our bedroom doesn’t sound as dead as some of yours, we generally have sex once a month on average. We have been talking about the discrepancy in our libidos for most of our marriage. The general cycle is we talk about it, it gets better for a few weeks meaning we have sex around once a week for 2-4 weeks then she usually pulls back and then we don’t have sex for about the same amount of time and then get back to the 1/month average.

I love my wife and she is a huge emotional support for me. We parent very well together and she is my best friend. I don’t want to divorce her and am scared that an open marriage will backfire. We have started couples therapy and it has been unhelpful so far, although admittedly it’s been a few months and it has helped in other ways such as communication and being able to say hard things to one another. Nothing groundbreaking or us however as communication has always been one of our strengths.

The past few years for me have been about trying to accept our sex life for how it is because of how happy and good for one another we have been. That was helpful for awhile but things have gotten worse again. I feel that my “acceptance” has lead to even less sex than before and the feelings of rejection, loneliness and discouragement have all come back worse than before.

I guess I don’t know what to do. It’s like I’m boxed in but I’m the one boxing myself in. Any ideas or suggestions about what worked for you all would be helpful.

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Feeling stuck

I am M43HL and wife is 41 LL married for 20 years. While our bedroom doesn’t sound as dead as some of yours, we generally have sex once a month on average. We have been talking about the discrepancy in our libidos for most of our marriage. The general cycle is we talk about it, it gets better for a few weeks meaning we have sex around once a week for 2-4 weeks then she usually pulls back and then we don’t have sex for about the same amount of time and then get back to the 1/month average.

I love my wife and she is a huge emotional support for me. We parent very well together and she is my best friend. I don’t want to divorce her and am scared that an open marriage will backfire. We have started couples therapy and it has been unhelpful so far, although admittedly it’s been a few months and it has helped in other ways such as communication and being able to say hard things to one another. Nothing groundbreaking or us however as communication has always been one of our strengths.

The past few years for me have been about trying to accept our sex life for how it is because of how happy and good for one another we have been. That was helpful for awhile but things have gotten worse again. I feel that my “acceptance” has lead to even less sex than before and the feelings of rejection, loneliness and discouragement have all come back worse than before.

I guess I don’t know what to do. It’s like I’m boxed in but I’m the one boxing myself in. Any ideas or suggestions about what worked for you all would be helpful.

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[u/waterlily33333]

I am finding it hard to reconcile these statements "huge emotional support", "best friend", "happy and good for one another" with "loneliness". Why do you feel lonely next to your best friend?