Dear Coleen
I’ve been married to my wife for 17 years and I love her very much. However, she had a difficult birth with our second son and became quite depressed afterwards and gained a lot of weight.
She’s managed to lose a lot of it and seems happier in herself, but the one thing that seems to have been impacted is her libido.
We’ve only had sex a handful of times in the last six years. I’ve tried to be patient, and I put a lot of it down to having children, but they’re older now and we get a lot of help with the boys from our family. We have date nights and I really fancy her, but she just doesn’t seem to fancy me back and never wants to make love – or even kiss, cuddle or hold hands.
I’m finding this lack of affection increasingly difficult, and I just don’t think I can lead a sexless life. What can I do? I don’t want my sons to grow up with divorced parents, but I don’t think I’m being unreasonable to expect my wife to want to sleep with me.
Coleen says
I feel for you, I really do. Your wife can’t just stop having sex with you and assume you’ll be OK with that. So I think you have to sit her down and talk to her and be really honest. Just explain that you really love her, and fancy her, and you appreciate that life is busy with two children.
Of course she’s tired, as are you, but you say yourself that you get a lot of help from your family. So ask her if there’s anything you can do to help make her feel less tired. Could you help out more around the house? Or take on a greater share of the childcare, or organising the household? Is the home, work and childcare labour split fairly equally between the pair of you?
Then, once you’ve discussed that, you need to explain that you can’t imagine not having sex or any form of physical affection for the rest of your life.
Don’t make it all about sex. Make it about your need for holding hands, kissing and cuddles. In many ways, those things are just as important and intimate as sex, if not more so. A hug can mean more than anything else.
You have to tell her how you feel. She can’t expect you to just put up with things the way they are. You’ve been pretty patient for six years, so now it’s time to say how this is making you feel, which I imagine is insecure, neglected and frustrated. And this is going to cause so many other problems if you don’t address it.
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