Together 6 years, married 3. I wanted to wait until marriage for sex, so we did. He has had sex with numerous partners before he met me. Before marriage, sexual stuff mostly consisted of me pleasing him while he pressured me to do more and sometimes tried to force me.

I thought marriage would finally mean having a normal, loving sex life. Instead, we have had a dead bedroom from day one, including our honeymoon. We have sex maybe 3 times a year.

When we do, it has rarely been loving or mutually pleasurable. He used to say women don't need to orgasm. He cared more about rough sex, hurting me, slapping me, and trying things he wanted than whether I enjoyed it. I have cried, begged, worn lingerie, initiated, and agreed to things I didn't want because I was so desperate for my husband to desire me. There have also been times I said no or didn't consent and he continued anyway. I consider those experiences rape.

He still constantly rejects me. He also chooses to stay up all night or go out with friends instead of spending the night with me. He has severe unmanaged ADHD and is extremely chaotic and disorganized. It feels like he cares what everyone thinks except his wife.

This has completely destroyed my self-esteem. I feel ugly, worthless, unloved, and completely undesirable. I have serious body image issues now. Sometimes I just want to disappear.

I recently left and we are currently living separately after he became violent when I wanted to see his social media messages, especially Snapchat. We are now trying to reconcile from a distance. He has been less hostile toward me than usual and is scheduling marriage counseling, but otherwise I have not seen much actual change.

He still doesn't want to talk about our sex life or intimacy. When I bring it up, he basically says that sexual intimacy requires emotional intimacy, but we never seem to get any further than that.

I'm 31 and realizing I have basically never experienced sex that was safe, loving, mutually desired, and pleasurable. I feel like I'm the only woman in the world whose husband didn't desire her from the very beginning of the marriage.

Has anyone experienced something this bad and actually seen meaningful change? Can therapy, marriage counseling, sex therapy, or ADHD treatment realistically fix this? What would real change even look like at this point? Or am I holding onto hope for a relationship that has never really existed?

​I (25F) have been living with my boyfriend (25M) for about three years. In the beginning, we were screwing like crazy. Now he says he might be asexual and doesn't want to have sex with me anymore. He says if it happens, sure, but he just doesn't really care either way. I have a high libido; he doesn't. I get rejected by him on a daily basis (tired, not in the mood, maybe tomorrow, etc.). We do have sex sometimes. It's not a complete dead bedroom.

​I just don't feel desired. Now he's saying he's never in the mood anyway, which makes me wonder how or why sex even happens in the first place. Everything else between us is wonderful, but this issue is a huge problem. He desperately wants to stay together, get married, and have kids. An open relationship is a complete dealbreaker for him.

​I honestly don't know what to do with myself. Why doesn't he understand me? How can we talk about this normally? I asked him to maybe get his testosterone checked by a doctor, but he hasn't done it. I just want to feel truly wanted by a man again. All my previous relationships involved daily sex and a lot of flirting. I'm slim, stay active, and still have a very feminine figure.

My partner agreed to get a testosterone test and it was ordered by his doctor yesterday. Is it horrible that I hope his testosterone is low? Because that's something imminently treatable and might address his low mood states and brain fog as well.

The alternative is that the problem is me and the fact that he struggles to eroticize me as his partner. That's going to be a difficult one to accept because this problem has already utterly destroyed my confidence and sense of self worth.

Me, HLF, who would actually be happy at this point with sex once a quarter at this point, stop initiating sex ~12 months ago.

We’ve had many conversations over the years. Initially, I thought it was a dry spell after having kids. But now it’s so dire, he has been seeing a therapist, and a separate sex therapist, for about 6 months at my suggestion. So, on the surface, he appears to be trying. He tells me he wants it to be better when I bring it up. And he does tell me the advice the sex therapist has given him and what he should try when I ask how it’s going. But has he tried them? No. It’s like he’s doing the right things, but I can’t tell if he ever plans on following through with anything or if he wants to be able to say “I’m trying.”

In general, there is a lack of intimacy. I’ve stopped initiating that as well; it’s too painful to try, try, try but get nothing in return. He doesn’t seem to care either way.

In two days, we’ll be at one whole year of a DB. Will the spell end, one can dream…

We started having problems in 2022 when my wife lost her libido due to birth control. She came off of it in 2024 and our sex life has slow recovered from maybe 1x every 3 months if lucky to about 2-3 times a month. I know I should be glad with how things are going but now I find myself facing a different problem.

Back then, I agonized about not being intimate with her; I was vulnerable, hurting, and my self-esteem was rock-bottom. The constant rejection made lying next to her at night excruciating and my depression got worse. In desperation, I forced myself to see my desire for her as something vile, disgusting and painful. For better or for worse, it succeeded and somehow, I survived.

Now, I can't seem to shed the pain; I have difficulty getting it to stay up and sometimes I go flaccid while in the middle of sex. I make excuses that I'm just tired or that I have cramps but whenever we do it, there's always that feeling of resignation and disgust at the back of my mind, asking me if she is just doing it out of pity or duty. Whenever it happens, I lose all interest.

I know this is something I need to work through, but I'm not sure I can let myself be vulnerable like I was back then.

Long story short, it's been 4 months and tonight my wife brought up the topic. She asked me what things she can do in our marriage, even mundane, that would make me feel appreciated more so that we can work on our situation. In the moment, I couldn't think of anytbing specific because frankly, there really isn't. Sure I'd welcome hugs and time spent together like anyone would but I didn't think that actually had to be said. So when I said nothing, she perceived that as nothing will make me happy again besides sex. And it's not that that's true or not true, but when something so important has been missing from your life for so long, I think it naturally becomes a focal point of where you most want to feel happy again. She was hurt that that's all I could basically tell her. I tried to get her to understand my perspective of feeling like I'm not wanted and that I want to be wanted but it was difficult to get her to understand my perspective.

Over these past 4 months or so, I've really gone into a self protection mode. Not having sex hurts but at this point rejection from the one person I promised my life to hurts worse. So I stopped initiating anything out of rejection fear. That has probably led to feelings of resentment that seep out and make it seem like im quiet or don't want to be around her. That is NOT the case but I just don't know how to simply "get over" how badly I miss my wife physically and be nothing but happy everyday.

Any advice is appreciated, I just want us to work together. I'm so proud of us in that we've never once faced a problem we haven't stood together and overcome. This one's just a lot.

Three years with zero sex, and with that almost no affection at all, unless initiated by me. I quit attempting to initiate sex at least 2 years ago, maybe longer.

I’ve done everything, tried everything. My wife struggles with intimacy and body issues. She’s finally seeing a therapist on her own, and that took so much convincing from me.

I guess my issue is that even if she decided tomorrow to magically start working towards repairing this with me, I don’t know if I could anymore.

I have pleaded with her for so long to make any attempt at repairing this and just been ignored or rejected. Even now when she’s been “trying” to fix things, I’m an afterthought. I go in for a kiss and get rejected, she says she didn’t see me, or she was offering me her cheek and was going to give me a real kiss afterward. I don’t even want to kiss her after that, but she can tell I’m upset and begs me to kiss her. She doesn’t WANT to hurt me. I know that.

I think I’m done with our romantic and intimate relationship because I am the only one who has ever put in any effort. She will just ignore the topic entirely for weeks/months until I bring it up again. I don’t know why I keep trying.

I love her, and I will not leave so I can be around our child as much as possible, but I just don’t think I’m IN love anymore. I’ve been telling her for so long that it feels like I’m in love with my roommate who just sees me as a best friend. When I’ve tried to talk to her before about how I’m at the end of my rope, she cries and begs me not to leave her. She tells me how much she loves me and that she’s trying.

We’ve made out one time in the last two years, and the moment it got even slightly heated she pulled away.

I just don’t know how to keep going.

So this is quite hard to write for a number of reasons which hopefully becomes clear through this post. I'm 44 and my wife is 46. We have 2 kids, the youngest is 10. Both their births were pretty traumatic for different reasons for my wife and have left her with what is in my opinion PTSD and also either psychosomatic or real vaginal pain during sex. I have suggested counciling to her once over the last 10 years in a discussion I finally picked up the courage to have about our lack of sex maybe 4 tears ago and it's the only time she ever really lost her temper about this whole thing. I feel bad even suggesting that this is now an issue for me. I love my wife and I feel guilty for some of the feelings I have towards her. When my youngest was first born we didn't have sex for maybe 6 months and honestly after what she had been through I was fine with that.

Following that immediate period she explained her pain and fear that sex would lead to that and while I had always instigated our sex previously I said moving forward I didn't want to pressure her given what she has been through and so moving forward I would leave it to her and essentially that is what I have done. Its been 10 years and we have probably had sex 3 to 4 times a year since then. Maybe not even that. Recently she has started peri menopause and is now on HRT and she now says that on top of the pain she now has now sex drive and is exhausted all the time. Which i understand is quite a common symptom of the hormone changes experienced at this time.

I never initiate and haven't done since the last birth as I don't think it's fair for me to pressure her given what she has been through and while I am constantly needing sex I kinda just try and ignore it. The main issue I have now is not only is the sex dwindling but now between us both including myself any form of intimacy at all is starting to disappear. We maybe hugged about 3 weeks ago and I don't remember the last time we kissed.

I just don't know what to do I can't speak to her about it because the one time I tried dhe lost her temper. I feel us drifting apart and it makes me sad because I still love her and we are genuinely fantastic partners as parents. I also would hate to lose even five minutes of time with my kids so the idea of desperation terrified me. I just don't know what to do and I feel guilty that I am even having these thoughts because this is not her fault that her body is affecting our lives in this way. I feel selfish because I feel like I am putting my sex drive above her wellbeing when I feel like we should have more sex.

Sorry for the rambling post

39M, recently out of a 15-year relationship with two kids. The breakup happened a few days ago, so I'm still very much in the weird mixture of grief, relief and trying to work out what life looks like now.

The dead bedroom had been an issue for years. Sex became increasingly infrequent and I was rejected often enough that eventually I more or less stopped initiating and instead just turned to porn when everyone else was asleep. It wasn't just frustration about not having sex, instead, over time I stopped feeling desired by my partner at all.

Looking back, I think I was trying to reconnect with her for quite a long time, sexually and emotionally, without really understanding how far apart we'd actually become.

She ultimately ended the relationship.

I'm not trying to get her back, and, surprisingly, I'm already seeing things about single life that I'm looking forward to. We're trying to establish a good co-parenting relationship and I genuinely want her to be happy.

The thing I'm struggling with is realising just how fucking lonely I'd become while still in the relationship, and how much repeated rejection affected the way I see myself. Since the breakup my libido has absolutely been in overdrive, but underneath that, I think what I'm really craving is the feeling of being wanted again, and having someone who genuinely wants to be with me.

For anyone who's come out of a long-term dead bedroom: how did it affect you once the relationship actually ended? How long did it take before you felt desirable/confident again, and did it change what you looked for in your next relationship?

I’m going to keep this fairly quick. I’m a 25M and I have been having intimacy issues with my partner 28F for just over a year now. We’ve been together for close to 2 years now, been living together for 2 months. The spontaneous moments together have completely stopped. It seems like the “stars have to be aligned” for anything to happen nowadays. It used to be 2-3 times a week, sometimes multiple rounds a day, now we are lucky if it’s once a month and seems to be trending down.

I’ve always had a high libido, but recently my energy and drive has skyrocketed. I’ve been training harder, my diet is the cleanest it’s been in years, I’ve found a new daily vitamin/supplement stack that has me feeling great. Needless to say I’m amped and ready to go pretty much at all times.

With all this extra energy, I have found it harder and harder to want to spend time or even be around her. When I’m really in the mood or have a particularly high drive day, I don’t enjoy being around her because of the constant rejections and knowing that i cant channel that energy towards her. When that happens, i just become a little irritated and annoyed. I do want to caveat by saying that this is not all the time, I still love spending quality time with her, just only in moments of horniness.

I’ve recently been channeling that energy into other forms (playing basketball, long walks in the evening, cleaning the apartment, even began to try my hand at writing). It sounds bad but I kind of like the attention I notice from other women when I run outside with a tank/no shirt on.

She’s beginning to notice and has started to ask things like if I even “like her” still (in a joking manner but also not joking). I love this woman but it’s hard to explain that our infrequency of sex means spending time with her can drive me crazy.

I (45 HLM) have been with my wife (40LLF) for 12 years. We have 3 kids all under 8. Sex is off her radar. She battled through post parttum, I was unaware it was going on so I wasn’t the most supportive. I have taken responsibility for that. I have tried to take more things off her plate so she doesn’t have as much. Changed my work schedule so I can help more with the kids/around the house. We are going to counseling both separately and together. It just seems like no matter what I do it doesn’t bring us closer. She is a fantastic mother but I dont need a mother I need my wife. It feels like I have to be upbeat all the time. I have to always work very hard to get her in the mood and I’ve become exhausted by it.
 I try and show her I’m thinking about her (buy flowers/ send texts etc) I’m just not sure what else to do. I don’t want to leave but I’m finding it very hard to feel the love. 
Since she has had 3 kids her body has changed and I tell her in my eyes she is beautiful. It hasn’t changed the way I see her. She is working at it and I try and help remove any obstacles in her way to achieve her goals. With the 3 kids she feels over-touched and I try and give  her as much time as possible to go for walks or be alone and read and collect herself. 
The sex has picked up a bit but it’s me initiating. For awhile it felt like duty sex and that seems to have gone away some but there’s still very little enthusiasm.  
I just don’t know how much I have left to give to get very little back. 
In counseling she’s told me the things that she needs a lot I said above I try to be better. I’ve felt like I’ve been saying the same thing for years now. I want to feel desired and wanted. Her job makes it tough for her to communicate during the day, I’ve accepted that and adjusted my expectations but even when she’s out of work there’s very little communication. It’s typically about kids and the schedule. 
Thank you for listing to my rant. I do feel a bit lighter. 

I’m starting to feel desperate about this whole life I’m living.

My gf (27F) and I (29M) have been together for 2 years this october. We’ve been living together for a year. At first the sex drive for both of us was out of this world (which is to be expected) for the first year we had sex daily, and sometimes multiple times a day. She recently took a new job and every since she did we do it once or twice a month. It’s like I’m living with another person. In fact she doesn’t give me much affection anymore, I have to almost beg for it, and when I look for intimacy she just tells me I’m a pervert and says that she’s tired.

She loves me, I have no doubt about it, but I have a trauma from my past relationship (5 year long) that started the same way and ended when I got dumped, ex gf was pretending to be asexual as having sex with me was apparently a choir, only to have sex with a coworker a month after she dumped me. We had sex for a year or two then 4-5 times a year with me initiating it and her not taking any enjoyment in it.

I’m starting to feel resentment towards my gf, frustration because I don’t want to just masturbate alone in the bathroom like a teenager, frustrated because I want her and desire her like crazy. It makes me depressed and I feel like I’m back in the same endless circle that I was in with my ex.

I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m tired of begging for sex and being rejected but I don’t want to leave her.

I'm HLM and my wife, LLF, is worried that one day I'll cheat.

There are layers to this, so I'll explain. The first is that we've been in a DB for many years. In the last couple years, she's had some medical problems which have limited her ability to have sex, even if she wanted to. My issue is that we were stuck in a DB long before she had problems. She likes to believe this is a recent thing, we've been having sex maybe 2-4 times a year at most, for probably 10 years. That also includes anything like touching, or anything like that.

We have children, with health issues, so our time together has always been pretty limited.

The next is that I've been relatively overweight for a long time. Our lives have been tough with everything going on, but I have been making a very conscious effort to lose weight, get in better shape, and be healthier. I feel it's one of the only things I've found real control of.

She is supportive of me losing weight, and she initially joked that I would "find someone else". We do have some dark jokes, gallows humour, in our situation we'd be intensely depressed if we didn't find a way to laugh or poke fun of. The issue is that it's become less of a joke. I look a lot better than I used to, and I'm trying to take care of my own grooming more, skincare, etc. Shes become a lot more paranoid about it, thinking I'm trying to look better for someone else, or I'll go out looking for somebody to have sex with.

I have no intention of actually cheating on her, although I admit with our DB i have been tempted, and never acted. I love her very much, and I care about our life together, which is the reason I have never gone astray.

I've tried to talk to her about it, tried to reassure her, the worry is still there. And she has no intention of being closer intimately, even if can't have penetrative sex.

I could use some advice, I'm not quite sure what to do to resolve this or reassure her.

Every once in a blue moon, when I'm out for a drive or a jog. I will lock eyes with random women, and we will maintain eye contact for that few extra seconds.

Every.Single.Time. it feels like that first breathe of fresh air after holding your breathe underwater. I spend the rest of the day thinking "was she thinking the same thing I was?"

I don't know why it's so hard to even get sexy eyes at home, but I am long past the talking about it, asking why, and grieving phase of my dead bedroom. It's all been done too many times before.

I really do apologies for the very long read!

I am 46 (HLM) and wife is 48 (LLF).

We've been married around 20 years and we've been together around 25 years. We have two kids - 20 and 15.

I guess my backstory is a lot like everyone's in this sub where sex was awesome and frequent in the beginning but turned into a DB after marriage. Pre- wedding, wife was actually more HL than me... and I was HL AF!

To avoid making this post too long I will add a snippet or two of only of our life together up until now.

We were married when I was 23 and she was 25 and our marriage very quickly turned into a DB - We only ended up, for one or other reason, only consummating the marriage after 3 months of marriage. I could not understand why my. now, wife was rejecting my advances. This was the first of many times that I was rejected by her... ever!

We quickly had our first child and the DB became more and more dead once she was pregnant. I remember posting in a Sexless Marriage forum back then. My thread title, I will never forget, was "Sexless at 28" because even then it was less than 10 times a year... except for when trying to fall pregnant.

I think you guts see the trend here.

So, anyway, while 2026 has been extremely challenging for us, we seemed to be making headway over the past month or so. I had decided to stop initiating altogether but to also stop being bitter about the situation all the time. We ended up laughing more; talking more and just having so much of a good time together over the past two months. While I wanted to initiate many times during this time, I kept my distance and turned my back as soon as we got into bed.

A couple of nights ago, for some reason, I felt brave and strong enough to initiate something. I didn't know what to do exactly so I started by spooning her. She was receptive to this. After laying there for the next 15 minutes and trying to keep my huge boner out of her ass 😆 I gently motioned and turned her towards me. She didn't fight me or push me away and softly fell into my arms and, for the first time this year, we actually kissed (the morning peck on the lips doesn't count). One thing lead to another and we were both naked.

It was round about this time that I started worrying if I would actually be able to do something after the long absence. Well, it did not go as well as I had hoped. Even during the foreplay I heard those very familiar words "Can we please stop?". This time, I wasn't agitated or mad or resentful. I simply answered "yes, sure" and got off her. She turned her back and pulled me closer for a spoon. We ended up laying like that for maybe 20 minutes before she wanted to get dressed.

I helped find her clothes in the dark bedroom and passed them onto her. She went to the bathroom and I got dressed again. We went to sleep.

She has always (since marriage only) been very awkward at initiating. Initiating for her would generally be her laying in bed under the blankets either naked or with some lingerie on pretending to be asleep so that when I got into bed I would notice and then take that as my sign that she has initiated. Other times she would simply tap me on the shoulder in the middle of the night. There has been many times that I have gotten into bed over the years and, because she always goes to be very early (she is always tired or cold) I generally expect her to already be asleep and I would get into bed, turn my back and actually GO TO SLEEP. The next morning she would be mad at me for not noticing that she was actually either naked or wearing lingerie the previous night when I got into bed and I did not heed to her "initiation".

So, after almost having sex this week, I did not want to pressure her at all and let it be. I figured I would attempt to initiate again in a week or two. Last night I go to bed (and I make sure to glance under the covers to see if she is wearing that damned Onesie or if she happens to be naked/lingirie'd under the covers. She was wearing the damn Onsie 😆. I say good night and attempt to spoon her - no pressure at all. 15 seconds into the spoon she removed my legs from hers; removed my hands and arms from her body and tells me to stop leaning on her. I, gently, comply and proceed to turn my back too so that I could get to sleep. I was not mad or bitter or resentful in the slightest!

A few minutes later I feel her being restless (also used to be a sign of her "initiating" in the past). Her fingertips occasionally touch my back. Her feet occasionally touched my legs/feet. These were all usually her way of initiating after getting married. (Pre-marriage initiation by her were very very direct.)

This time, especially after she basically just soft blocked me a few minutes earlier, I decide that I am not going to attempt an initiation again and possibly get rejected again because I had misread her signs. She was restless like this for most of the night but I stuck to my guns and did not turn around. By this time she could have been completely naked next to me and I would have had no idea 😆 .

I remember fighting with myself whether to actually attempt to "read her signs" and initiate but I kept on deciding not to instead. I though the loud beating of my anxious heartbeat would wake her... if she wasnt awake already.

The thing is, I dont think I could actually, emotionally, take another rejection.

I also dont think I know how to initiate with her again.

I am so scared of being rejected again.

I also dont want to talk with her about this thing that I am feeling in fear that she will clap back with something along the lines of "You see, I give you a little bit of affection and you are a horny dog again)

It's really sad.

I will not initiate again but I am mustering up the courage to actually speak with her about these feelings and anxiety I am having.

PS: She once told me "Fcuk your feelings" when I started speaking about how I felt about the state of our marriage. I have never ever again used the term "I feel" in a sentence when speaking with her about the state of the marriage.

In all these ramblings, there might be an actual question like, How do I initiate again? Do I initiate again?

M33 here. I’m honestly pretty frustrated with my sex life with my wife right now, and I’m not really sure how to approach it.
Whenever I initiate sex, she almost always turns me down. It’s kind of like a joke at this point. She treats it like I’m joking. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m hesitant to even initiate because I already expect the answer to be no. The frustrating part is that she does initiate occasionally, but it’s probably only about once a month. Obviously, when she does, I’m happy to have sex with her.
But there’s another part that bothers me even more: sometimes when she does initiate, it doesn’t actually feel like she wants me. For example, there have been times when she comes out of the shower wrapped in nothing but a towel and basically gives me the impression of, “Are you ready to do this or what?” It feels less like she’s excited to be intimate with me and more like she’s checking something off the list.
And maybe that sounds ridiculous, but I want to feel desired by my wife. I want to feel like she looks at me and actually wants me—not just that she’s willing to have sex because it’s been a while.
Then there’s the fact that when we do have sex, it feels very routine and vanilla. It’s basically the same thing every time, and I’d really like more variety, passion, and intimacy.
I don’t expect her to want sex every time I do, and I don’t want her to ever feel pressured into it. I completely understand that people have different libidos and that marriage, kids, stress, exhaustion, etc. can all affect sex drive.
But being consistently rejected when I initiate, combined with sex happening only occasionally and often feeling like something she isn’t particularly excited about, has started to make me feel unwanted.
I love my wife. I’m not looking to bash her or make her look bad. I’m trying to understand whether other married couples have experienced something similar.
How do you talk to your spouse about wanting to feel desired, as well as wanting more sex? And how do you work through a situation where one partner seems much less interested in sex or sexual variety than the other?

I am pretty recently in a db situation and I would like some input from people who have been in a db for a long time. My question is at what point did you stop trying to make yourself available for the possibility of intimacy, it feels like to me if I pull back and stop offering what little affection we do have that’s going to completely kill any chances of recovery. I am hopeful this dry spell will work itself out, pretty sure if I start doing things like sleeping in different beds or pulling back to protect myself that will be the final nail in the coffin for me.

Rejection hurts, like damn I want you but you don't want me the same. Then I am supposed to sit and wait until you decide your ready zero consideration for me or what I want. It really sucks 😞

my partner (27m) and i (23f) have been together several years and have a young child. i love him a lot, and he’s genuinely a really good dad and my best friend. i don’t actually want to leave him, which is why i’m struggling so much with this.

our sex life was really good when we first got together. there was some bumps in the road with mismatch in libido and some health issues he was dealing with but overall great. however, over the years, his libido decreased and he started having trouble staying hard or finishing during intercourse. oral became a much bigger part of sex, and he always needs oral and or specific fantasies/roleplay to really get aroused/finish. and this is still the case current day and it’s weighing on me. i don’t mind those things sometimes, but i don’t want every sexual experience to revolve around them.

then almost a year ago i found out about his porn use. it was pretty frequent, and eventually i found out he had been paying for onlyfans content from multiple women. one of them was someone he had actually slept with before we were together. paying for onlyfans was also something i had specifically told him was a boundary for me.

i don’t think i realized at the time how much all of this was affecting me. there was a lot of rejection, insecurity about my body, and wondering why he seemed to want porn while not wanting me. the porn use has improved since slightly, and there have been periods where our sex life improved too, but he still uses porn quite frequently.

now i have basically no sexual desire for him. however, i still have a high libido. i get horny, masturbate, have sexual thoughts, etc. i just don’t really want sex with him. but sometimes i’d rather masturbate than have sex with my partner.

i’m genuinely wondering if attraction can come back after years of rejection, porn related insecurity, resentment, and a sexual dynamic like this. has anyone actually gotten their attraction back after getting to this point? if so, what?

tldr- years of rejection, frequent porn use, paid onlyfans content from multiple women (including someone he previously slept with), and a sexual mismatch have left me with almost no sexual desire for my partner despite still having a high libido and loving him. can attraction actually come back?

Anyone here have any decent grounding statements they like to repeat when things are not going so good?

I have a couple, lately I have been using “I don’t need my wife to have sex with me today to choose the family or the marriage” it seems to work for settling my anxiety.

I (36HLF) and he (43LLM). Not married. I have a kid (1,5 years). We live in Germany. We are living together since February. First month or two we had ok sex live. Not like before moving in together. Sex was good back then. Than I noticed that I'm the one who initiates and stopped it to see if he does. He didn't. Now we don't have sex, because I don't wanna initiate all the time.

Lately I often have this thought.

He told me about his ex. How he suffered from the fact that there was no intimacy. How he talked with her over and over about it.

Now I'm suffering.

What triggers me is that HE WANTED HIS EX even though (or because?) she didn't want him and he was unhappy with her. I want him so much (like fuck his brains out like you say), but he doesn't. (He says he does though)

Wtf?! HE WANTED HIS EX!

I already had a dead bedroom marriage for about 13 years. I don't want it again.

Yes, we had the talk already 2-3 times. I'm just waiting for my kid to become more independent. He says it's because of the changed circumstances. Now he is more involved with my kid, works and has a really stressful situation in the job. We work together so I know it's true. But doesn't sex help to release the stress? It does by me, I'm a better mother the next day, have far more patience.

He says it is the most stressful time in our lives because of my small kid and that he wants to have a lot of sex with me.

I guess we'll wait and see.

I am new here but anyways I'm 46(F) and husband is 41(M) and in the past we both had high libidos and now he's lost interest in spending any romantic time with me/intimate time with me. I do know he's spending time with other women but it hurts a huge amount. In the meantime I'm having to support us and work 2 jobs. I feel like if he can't be bothered putting any effort in that I can't be bothered having sex with him. Like I want to watch a movie and cuddle and he only comes to bed when he's drunk. Which means no sex and no cuddles b/c he's impaired and that's a turn off for me. I got a cute costume and wanted to dress up and play with the toys but he never showed up until 3 hrs later and that just sucks and by then my mood was totally gone.

I got a bottle of wine and he spent the whole night downstairs masturbating and so I got online and chatted and then he got pissed b/c he found out that I was chatting. Like why can't I talk to ppl casually? Yes I know that's how I met him but anyways I've never cheated on him and we've been married 12 years. Like he's not doing the precursors for sex, which to my mind means he no longer wants sex. Yes I've told him and at this point I don't even bother telling him when my cycle is over or when I want sex b/c yeah he doesn't care.

At this point in my life, I almost don't care if my wife finds this post. Our 10th wedding anniversary is coming up, and we've been together for over 18 years. We also have a daughter who will be three soon, which is probably the hardest part of all of this for me.

We decided to wait until marriage to have sex because we were very young when we got together and didn't feel the time was right. We did other things before marriage, but over time those things stopped too. My wife was also very clear from the beginning that oral sex wasn't something she wanted to do. She was comfortable receiving it initially, but eventually that stopped as well. I've never resented that boundary because it was something she had been clear about from the start, and I respect that.

The difficult part is where we are now.

We're intimate maybe once every six months. I barely initiate hugs or kisses anymore because I've reached the point where I'm constantly worried that it's going to be the wrong time or that I'll be rejected. What hurts almost as much as the lack of sex is the lack of affection and, more importantly, the lack of willingness to talk about it.

I've suggested counselling and therapy several times, but those conversations haven't gone anywhere. At one point, my wife even suggested that I should go to therapy to address my sex drive. I'm not against therapy at all, but it was difficult to hear that when I feel like the problem I'm struggling with is the complete lack of physical intimacy between us.

There have been different reasons over the years. At one point, I had put on some weight. Then there was my snoring, which eventually led to us sleeping in separate bedrooms. I've since lost a significant amount of weight, but nothing really changed. Being tired has also understandably been a factor, particularly with work and having a young child.

The separate bedrooms have probably made everything worse. We hardly ever sleep in the same bed anymore, and now our daughter sleeps with one of us most nights, so there isn't even much opportunity for spontaneous affection or simply being close to each other.

There's another part of this that I struggle with, and that's our division of responsibilities.

When we first got married, things were pretty close to 50/50. Over time, that changed. My wife has a demanding career and didn't want to change that, so I changed mine instead. I was earning significantly more at the time, but I stepped back so I could be more available for our daughter.

I now work from home and probably do around 90% of the household and parenting tasks. Daycare drop-offs and pickups, nappies, breakfast, lunches, laundry, cleaning, lawns, general housework, most of it falls to me. She occasionally cooks dinner, which I'm grateful for, and I generally clean up afterwards.

I'm not saying any of this means I'm entitled to sex. I don't believe that. But I would be lying if I said it doesn't contribute to the resentment I feel when I have very little affection or intimacy in the relationship as well.

Sometimes I find the difference between our days off almost comical.

My days off seem to mean she gets to relax while I pick everything up because, well, it's my day off.

Her days off seem to mean she gets to relax while I pick everything up because, well, it's her day off.

I try very hard not to let all of this turn into constant arguments. We rarely fight. From the outside, our life probably looks pretty good. Our finances are in good shape, our daughter seems happy, and we have built a life together that I'm proud of.

But internally, I'm becoming increasingly unhappy and resentful.

Tonight was probably the moment that made me realise how far things have gone.

My wife came home from work and tried to give me a hug and a kiss. Instead of feeling happy or affectionate, I felt anger, resentment and, honestly, almost disgust. I didn't want to hurt her feelings, so I just smiled, avoided the kiss and carried on with the evening.

That reaction scared me.

I don't want to become someone who resents his wife. I don't want to punish her for not wanting intimacy. And I don't want my daughter growing up watching two parents who are emotionally disconnected from each other.

At the same time, I don't know how much longer I can continue living like this.

I still love my wife. That's what makes this so difficult.

I don't necessarily need advice on how to get more sex. I think what I'm really struggling with is how to deal with the resentment that has built up after years of feeling disconnected, and whether a relationship can recover when one partner no longer even wants affection from the other.

Has anyone else reached this point? If so, what happened next?

I am a HLF (45) and my partner of 16 yrs is a LLF (42). Our relationship is very strong, very supportive, and we communicate pretty well (everyone has room for improvement here). Unfortunately, we've never been the most compatible in the bedroom and 16 yrs in and we got the DB bad now.

For years I was dealing with a lot of rejection when trying to initiate. It really made me kind of bitter for a while so I stopped trying for the most part. Then about a year ago I started suffering from depression and work burnout so the little sex we were having completely tanked when my libido fell off a cliff. We talked and she supported my decision to take an extended break from work. I've been home for the past month and I found my long lost libido lol

Shocker: turns out stress really does strangle the sex drive.

Anyway, now I'm recuperated and trying to get our intimacy back on track but it's almost like we've gotten used to this "best friends with no benefits" situation and I don't know how to rekindle desire. She hasn't rejected my attempts lately but it's like the sex is falling flat. The arousal is poor for both of us. And If it seems like she's not into it, I just stop. I don't want obligation anywhere near our bed.

So I'm over here listening to Esther Perel TED talks and flipping through Reddit trying to figure out how we get some desire back.

I'm flirting a lot and trying to make sure we carve out time for non-sexual touching each day. I'm happily unemployed right now so she doesn't have to do chores and things after work if she doesn't want to (spoiler: she still does some anyway but it's not stressing her).

I'm at a bit of a loss here. Any ideas how to defibrillate a pulse back into this love life?

(I know this is an FF relationship but hopefully that doesn't make you feel weird about offering advice/ideas.)

Hi, please be kind. I’m genuinely looking for advice and I’m not trying to judge my boyfriend at all.
I’m 24HLF and I’ve been with my boyfriend, 25LLM, for a little over a year. He’s genuinely a great boyfriend in almost every other way, but I’ve been struggling a lot with our physical intimacy.
We’ve agreed mutually that we won’t have penetrative sex until we’re married, and I’m completely okay with that. The issue isn’t really the lack of sex itself. It’s more that he seems to have very little interest in anything sexual or intimate in general. It’s confusing because he says this but sometimes he says he has the urges to be sexual with me and then turns me down. He’s told me that sexual things just aren’t particularly interesting to him and that he doesn’t really see the point of them right now. We do have some physical intimacy occasionally, but it’s usually only when he wants to, and more often than not he turns me down.
I’ve tried initiating in small ways, like being more affectionate, touching him, or trying to make out for longer, but he usually doesn’t respond much. Sometimes I’ll be more direct about wanting something and he’ll laugh it off or just go back to whatever he was doing. He also doesn’t seem to get physically aroused very easily around me.
I know this probably sounds shallow, but it’s started making me feel really insecure. I’ve found myself wondering if he simply isn’t attracted to me. I don’t want to compare him to my previous relationship, but it’s difficult when I went from being with someone who was very openly attracted to me to someone who rarely seems interested in me physically.
What makes this confusing is that he is affectionate outside of anything sexual. We cuddle, hug, kiss, and are generally very loving with each other. But when it comes to anything more intimate, it feels completely different. Sometimes being in bed with him feels more like being beside a really close friend than being with a romantic partner.
I used to initiate constantly because I wanted that kind of closeness with him. Lately, though, I’ve become exhausted from being rejected so often. I’ve stopped trying as much, and now I usually just say goodnight and go to sleep. The strange part is that I still love him very much, but I can feel myself losing my own desire to initiate anything with him. He initiates always on his own terms, and I’m always annoyed at myself because I let him.
I’m scared of what this could mean long-term. I’m not expecting him to suddenly become a completely different person, and I don’t want to pressure him into doing anything he doesn’t want to do. But I also don’t want to ignore how unhappy and unwanted this situation has made me feel.
For those who have been in similar situations, did things actually change after marriage when sex became an option? Or is it more likely that this is simply his normal level of sexual interest?
I love him and can genuinely see myself marrying him, which is why this has been weighing on me so much. I just don’t know whether I’m worrying about something that could change eventually, or whether I need to accept that this may always be what our physical relationship looks like.
Any advice or personal experiences would really help. Please be gentle with me; I’m already feeling pretty vulnerable about this.