Just after some advice. How would you go about starting a conversation about sex without causing resentment or sounding like I’m nagging? I really would like to improve our sex life because at the moment I just feel rejected a lot. I did feel like we were making progress for a while but we seem to have gone backwards again. I don’t want to make him feel like he has to have sex if he doesn’t want to, I just want to understand his feelings, why he isn’t interested, if there’s anything I could do and what might he be open to doing so that we both feel satisfied.
I used to initiate sex most of the time but now I don’t really try because I got so fed up of being turned down and it made me feel really upset. I also know that, if i don’t ask, it won’t happen!!
Haha, that sounds familiar! He really doesn’t like talking about sex, even with me. I find it difficult but nowhere near as hard as him. He will talk if he’s had a drink but he doesn’t really like to drink and I’d rather have a sober conversation anyway!
It sound like something could be troubling your partner ! A general show of interest always helps , as for feeling rejected I would honestly tell them that the way you feel let them no what you want and that there no time scale or pressure , if nothing else it will lead to a conversation about how you’ve ended up in this situation I really hope you sort it soon
Thats great advice! Were similar at times. If we have a tricky subject, not necessarily about sex we tend to talk on the phone or in bed in the dark. We communicate well but sometimes its easier when you cant see each other. Saying that, were hugely working on it and getter better as the years pass.
Maybe sit down with a nice romantic meal, a couple of bottles of wine to add some social lubrication, the important thing is not to put any blame on anyone, rather than saying something like “I know you’re always tired” something like “I know we have busy lives at the moment” obviously that’s just a generic example, maybe his secret fantasy life he’s into something a bit more extreme, or taboo or something like pegging where he might feel that you would think he was gay, so he’s not comfortable talking about it, you have to prepare yourself for a good or bad outcome
If he doesn’t like a direct conversation how about writing a personal letter or even an email message where you can keep going back to it and editing it?
Maybe say something along the lines of you miss the way things were at the start of your relationship and you wish you could recapture that frisson between the two of you. Try not to be accusatory and assigning blame, just say maybe you could both make the effort to be more spontaneous and increase the intimacy.
I have trouble sometimes verbally putting into words my thoughts, but find it so much easier to write them down. Maybe seeing your ideas and thoughts in black and white will mean more to your OH?
Hope you can resolve this.
I agree with @Mrs.John and try out the car drive talk or just simply open up and talk to ask him what’s been on his mind of late to see if can work out what’s going on sexual wise
I have similar experiences to you with my husband.
A few months ago I found one of the online relationship quizzes, edited out the questions which were not relevant to us and added in questions I felt more suitable. Basically what we like/don’t like, what we would like to try etc, etc.
I emailed him the quiz when he was away with work and said when he was finished we could swap answers, so not to pressurise him into quick snap answers. I took my time filling in my answers too.
I think it is something I would like to revisit from time to time to see if our answers change.
Thanks everyone. Lots of ideas I’m going to spend a bit of time digesting them and thinking about the best way forward. I’m liking the letter idea at the moment but need to think about it.
I write an email so she can ponder the questions. We had a discussion in bed last night where I was accused of “pouting”. I said I am being sensitive of her tiredness, anxiety and stress and wouldn’t pressure anything. I don’t care for being accused of stuff when I am trying to help, but it seems you can’t win.
I want her to be “all-in”, not just having sex for my sake or because she has to. I initiate sex almost 100% of the time and it gets exhausting. Zero effort from the other person? Might as well just get myself off… so I feel your pain. I have been dealing with this for the last few years, and although it has gotten better, it seems to come in strange “waves” where nothing happens forever and then she gets some interest, is all over me and then nothing. No rhyme or reason…just confusing
This is a bit like things are for us. From my point of view it’s stress dependent hence the long gaps and then sudden interest. For both of us I think it’s a case of doing it once, remembering how much fun it is and then it drives us to repeat the experience until the next stressful event stops interest. I find, the more sex I have the more I want. If it’s been a while then I lose motivation.
Well this is the second time I’ve recommended this today, but it really did work for us. At the beginning of Lockdown we downloaded Kindu.
It’s really good as it presents you both with various suggestions each day, some romantic and some sexual and each partner has to vote, using their own device on whether or not they want to try the suggestion. If you both say that you are into that particular suggestion then it comes up as a ‘match’ and you can then ‘wink’ to each other to turn the suggestion into action!
If one or both of you vote ‘no’, then it never comes up as a match and your partner will never know that you voted ‘yes’, so it’s a really good way to get an understanding of what turns you BOTH on, while at the same time avoiding any embarrassment that may be felt if one of you is into something and the other on is repulsed by it. Using the winks is then a comfortable way of suggesting some fun later in the day.
You could maybe wink a romantic match, followed by a sexual match to set the tone for the evening. This could also help to create some excitement as it gives you something to look forward to.
Always a difficult thing to approach, and in similar position myself, where feels like had similar repeated conversations and things don’t necessarily change as such.
I think one important realization for us (me) lately is what sex means to each of us.
For me, sex is my ‘go to’ way of expressing my feelings for my partner, love and sex are very closely knit for me, and pleasing my partner is a big thing of how I feel, and how I get my intimacy box ticked. Going the next level with kink allows me to be more vulnerable, it is showing my full self and it’s a real creative outlet for me.
For my girlfriend, sex is sex, she could take it or leave it. She doesn’t get the same enjoyment for pleasing me as I do her. Her past experiences mean sex and love have no relation for her at all, pleasing me sexually is not an expression of her feelings, she gets nothing from it.
That means our sexual activity, when it happens, tends to feel a little one sided - but it tends to work for us as I get plenty from pleasing.
Because of my disability, being able to perform sexually and feeling desired is really important - it stops me from feeling defective. However, the stuff around the disability I have to own, because it is my thoughts and beliefs that make me ‘need’ sex to validate myself.
I guess all I’m saying is that sex, and all the many different parts of it, mean different things to us all, and a lot of the time in the past (all the time before this relationship), I have expected my partners to just know what intimacy, sex and kink actually mean to me. Also means I can understand myself better and see why things are like that for me.
Actually having conversations with a person to understand that kind of stuff is very difficult though, and the only way I have been able to do that is by being open around why this stuff is important for me and where it comes from. It doesn’t mean I always get back the info I want from my partner, but at least I’ve done whats in my control by explaining what ‘being rejected’ actually means to me.
Reading what I’ve written, it’s actually very little in terms of advice, just more on how we’re all individual and have such different perspectives and meanings around things. And of course, another chance for me to talk about me
Thanks for sharing this @Mr_Kink1, it’s been very helpful. I’m like you in that sex and love are very much linked and having sex is a very important way for me to give and receive love, without sex I feel disconnected. Until you wrote this, I never realised that my husband might not feel this way and after a chat in the car last night, it turns out that sex is very different for him and isn’t connected with love in the same way as it is for me. I often struggle to understand that other people see the world differently to me, I can have very strong emotional responses to things and I find it hard to understand that lots of other people don’t feel that way - someone actually had to explain to this to me and it totally blew my mind. Equally, he didn’t know what sex meant to me and I think he now understands why I want to have sex and why it’s such an emotional thing for me. I’m not sure where we’re going from here but just understanding this difference has helped a lot.
I did not get a good response when I asked this, but 5 years into the relationship, guess who’s doing exactly this! The hardest part I think is not feeling rebuffed by the lack of enthusiasm.
I can relate, I try to keep a continual open conversation, but it does require the OH to be invested in your well-being as well. If that is in place then having a chat about where you’re at, even explaining you feel like you are nagging and feel rejected a lot like you have here might give him some insight that he might not have considered. Assuming the rest of your relationship is healthy, he should at least consider your feelings and help you guys come up with a compromise.
The other thing is his lifestyle, if he’s low in T, perhaps that could be addressed too. For us, the OH started back at the gym and eating better and everything fell back in to place after our tough patch.
Others have offered fantastic advice already so I’m also just here to say I feel you, you aren’t alone.
My OH actually struggles with pressure too, ironically the more I push for sex the less sex we have. That’s not to say he has low drive, we are quite similar, but mine is higher than it used to be, so he’s not used to me having a higher drive than before yet. I am still learning how to manage that.
But he is always open to conversation so sometimes I just send him a text at work that can sometimes be quite blunt. “Babe I’m horny af” “I need you inside me later… please” and he’s always been happy to sort us out once he knows. But that’s not happened overnight and is still a work in progress. I still sometimes just expect him to know without communicating
Our frequency is quite good but for some reason our success rate is nearly always when he initiates. My initiating is usually badly timed, somehow, I’m just not a natural. He is a very sensitive individual with clinical adult ADHD so I have to be sensitive to where his head is at, and I am generally rubbish at that.
Bottom line I think is figure out if there’s anything not aligning with him, pressure, lifestyle etc and then let him know what it means for you and work out a compromise together. It won’t be perfect overnight but small steps is better than no steps.
As for me I’ll see how the reducing the pressure goes
I’m pleased it has helped in someway!
It doesn’t solve the problem I know, but for us it has helped us have more meaningful conversations around sex and what our needs and wants are (well, more so for me than the OH but that’s a long story).
Before it felt like the stereotypical conversation where I just wanted to get my end away, and we’d be locking horns with the ‘this again’ type situation.
I’ve had to take a long look at what my actual needs and wants are. I don’t need kink (although very much want it), but I do need reassurance, intimacy, to feel desired and wanted. My default is getting this through sex and kink, and I need to look at how else I can get those needs met when my OH see’s things differently.
Like yourself, I have no idea where me and my OH go from where we are, but what I do know is I have to be true to myself. It is not wrong for me to want and need sexual intimacy, but that doesn’t mean my girlfriend has to fulfil that need either. It may just be that our world view and beliefs are not aligned in that way. I have to either accept how things are and find other ways for my needs to be met in the relationship, or accept that we’re not as compatible as I thought we were and consider if the relationship is right for me. Lots to consider, but whatever happens I have learnt more about myself, and I think my other half has learnt a lot about herself too in terms of her own needs and how they’re being met.
I would honestly tell them that the way you feel let them no what you want and that there no time scale or pressure , if nothing else it will lead to a conversation about how you’ve ended up in this situation I really hope you sort it soon 
I’m going to spend a bit of time digesting them and thinking about the best way forward. I’m liking the letter idea at the moment but need to think about it.
