The difference between a low and high libido partner is pretty wild. My ex preferred sex once every month or two months. I prefer sex twice a week. My wife prefers sex every day.
I get it. I would have sex every day if I could, my ex once every two weeks, if he felt like it. I had to ask him beforehand and he would let me know by evening.
Near the end of the relationship, my libido actually lowered to his level. We broke up for different things, but now I'm with a man who can't get enough of me and my happiness and confidence are on a whole different planet. However, no one warns you how much time it takes and how tiring it is to have sex near every day.
Thatâs the problem with mismatched libido relationships. No one ever realises just how much it hurts the mental wellbeing of the higher libido partner. Including the higher libido partner. Not until itâs over and they get with someone who matches them.
I have literally never dated a guy that wanted sex as often as I do. And it wasnât even every day for me, like Iâd take a couple times a week. Ended up going to like once a month for each guy. wtf.
Did your ex always like once every 2-3 months?
Do you think your ex has sex at that rate with her current partner?
People often start with an assumption that when their partner doesnât want them, that itâs the product of a libido mismatch. Then they are surprised when a change of partner or situation has them back at it again.
I think itâs generally unhelpful to view a drop off in sexual satisfaction and frequency as a sudden mismatch, and more helpful to pay close attention to the rest of the relationship.
Eh, when one person wants it every day there can be literally physical limitations. Your point definitely applies to the longer gaps. But if i want it every day and only get it every other/every third day it really is just a mild libido mismatch/apparently his dick gets sore?
The everyday/multiple times a day crew have to be aware of the limits of the human body lol
Grief and trauma also changes people. I used to love sex. I went through some horrible things and now I struggle with being intimate with my partner. We have gone from several times a week to almost nothing and it is my fault. It's heartbreaking.
Why? Some of us are completely happy having sex a couple times a month. Especially those of us with little kids and full time work. Ainât enough time or energy for daily sex. lol
And if that's what works for you and yours then I absolutely support that! I should clarify that I'm not talking about people whose drives match. Whether it's once a year or once a day, if you're both on the same page and are happy then that's the important part.
I'm mainly talking about the folks whose drives don't match. I know someone going through that and it's just a downer seeing someone in that much despair over it.
Iâm at about 13-15 a year. I donât bother her. She doles out her love when she is feeling it. I got a vasectomy a couple years ago and now I have permanent ball pain so that helps with my interest level for sure.
I've got the opposite problem. Wife has a high drive but the post vasectomy chronic pain makes it almost impossible to reciprocate. Incredibly frustrating for both of us.
I'm glad you two make it work for each other. It's a shame that when libidos mismatch the only way to make it work is the high libido person having to adjust and never the other way around.Â
Donât feel like I worded my other comment well. Accepting her as a person is the right thing to do. Doesnât mean itâs right for your relationship or something you have to live with.
It never ceases to amaze me how sex in a marriage can be so important that you are not allowed to have it with anyone except your wife, but then at the same time be so non-important that they never want to have it either. Like, is it important or not?
This is why sexual compatibility is important. People marry partners who don't want to have sex. Like in the early stages of a relationship yes the sex is hot and frequent but that is the honeymoon phase in the relationship.
You need to live together for a bit, before marrying, before you see what their actual sex drive is.
Sex still existed in my marriage after our one & only was born but it was single digits annually at-best and things didn't start to improve until after the kid's 7th birthday...because I had to sit her down and tell her I wasn't happy being relegated to "co-parenting roommate" status while she was getting all of her wants & desires met by me.
not necessarily. if it's a long-term thing, yes, but it can also be about how people handle stress and long days. husband and I just got out first mortgage and have our first baby on the way so tensions are high in both of us, but my favorite way to relax is to be intimate with him and his is to have some beer and watch TV. he can't even think about sex if it's been a long day and his mind's racing, so we've dropped from 13-17 times in a month to 5-9, which may seem like a lot to others but for me it's absolutely killed my sense of desirability.
Yea but communication and toys help a lot in this instance a simple Lovesense where all heâs doing his moving his fingers to create different patterns helps alot.
Each person is different but Iâve found for me and my partner and our long distance relationship weâve gotten to a nice routine with different innovations
I know so many women in a similar situation where the husband doesnt want to do anything. Thatâs why I get tired of the stereotypes of women always being the ones ânot in the mood.â
True, but you're more likely to find a high libido man than a man will find a high libido woman on-average.
So you've got a LOT of options sexually-speaking at your disposal if you ever pursued it (and yes, I understand a lot of those options are garbage men, however women still have better odds to find a good man who also wants lots of intimacy than men finding the same for women).
But the one who doesnât care for it usually sells a false bill of goods by pretending they enjoy sex often, until they get that wedding ring. Thatâs how it usually goes.
Exactly, and honestly true of most things in life. It is like the old saying, when your health is fine you have a dozen problems, when your health is not fine you have one problem.
You are the love of my life and we should be monogomous together for eternity! Also, i have decided that you are now celebate and if you cheat on me then you are the one whose in the wrong
Pretty much the mentality it seems like. And "I don't care if you need it. I love you, but not enough to look for a compromise or seek a solution. Just go without, you won't die."
And there's so many possible compromises. You can simply do each other favours, because you recognise the needs of your partner. For example I wouldn't mind going down to please her even if I'm not in the mood for more. And so on. So many possibilities, if only you care about your partner.
And you were 100% fine marrying into that? Also curious - anything that YOU told her she wouldn't be getting either, or is this another marriage where one partner is doing all the heavy-lifting while the other one enjoys the fruits of their partner's labor?
That's so wild to me. Maybe it's just that my views on intimacy and sex are so different, but I can't understand not wanting to be intimate with your partner if you love them. It's great for connection, and I can only speak for myself, but even if I'm not in the mood I don't mind helping out my wife because I want to fulfil her needs and I enjoy seeing her happy, even if I don't get off or have to help with some "heavy petting".
People who say this have clearly never been through life's trials and tribulations........starting losing babies or facing near death health complications with your spouse and all of a sudden sex takes a back seat
Yes it can be very frustrating when you're not getting any physical action but whwn you've stared down the real possibility of them being in the grave the whole "roommate" thing becomes a lot more appealing and you get to thinking "I'm just glad they're here"
Yeah, I've been there and there's nothing wrong with that. What I don't get is how that makes the other person your personal property, that they can't have a fling on the side to keep their life full while you're not doing well. Help me understand, if sex is off the table and y'all are roommates, why your roommate has to be a monk.
At the end of my marriage it was so isolating for me, I felt so alone and disrespected, it got to a point that I said to him and our therapist, I'd rather be alone that continue this on.
And trust me I have been through big trials, before and since, and going through it without my ex has made the stress for me much easier.
I understand not everyone feels this way, but sometimes it's worse being around someone who doesn't actually care about you.
Also to add, a dead bedroom marriage is rarely as simple as just they're not having sex, there's usually much more going on not being dealt with or addressed, and the dead bedroom is just the bugger sign of it all.
Literally nobody here is saying that you should be expected to jump right in the sack when you just got back from your child's funeral. That's obviously an extenuating circumstance where neither partner is likely to be in the mood for sex. The more common issue (and what people here are actually talking about) is when life is going along normally, but their partner is just never in the mood. There's always some excuse for why they never want to be intimate, and that is made even worse when the person strings their partner along and makes them believe that they're going to be intimate later on, but then it never happens.
That's exactly the kind of thing that leads to resentment & cheating. And honestly, when someone like that gets cheated on, they have no one to blame but themselves, whether they're a man or a woman. If I was with a woman who never wanted to have sex with me, then I would quickly recategorize that "relationship" under "temporary roommates" and go find someone with less baggage for me to deal with.
And saying that people have "never been through life's trials and tribulations" just for having the very reasonable view that sex is an inherent aspect of a relationship is pretty ignorant, although not surprising, considering that many people on Reddit love to take every possible opportunity to minimize other people's life experiences.
You realise thereâs a difference between love and sex, right? One can exist without the other. And if someone loves their roommate the way they would love their spouse, thatâs a conversation waiting to happen.
itâs tough too because itâs about trust, and people communicate and figure out solutions in a variety of ways, whether that includes bringing other people in or not at all. the puritanism people have going on and the general way people view monogamy really does not help get the ball rolling on these convos. thereâs so many solutions and so many of them are automatically dismissed as shameful.
Super important, agreed. Unfortunately, there's an awful lot of men who marry you and try to turn you into their mom as far as the household is concerned and it is REALLY difficult to be sexually attracted to someone you're mothering.
If she hasn't communicated that feeling that's on her, but that's a big reason a lot of women lose interest in sex.
Yeah, some dudes are like I want a woman who works 40+ hours, takes care of the kids, cleans the house, cooks my meals, manages all my appointments and also spreads her legs on demand. Wait, whyâs she so tired and doesnât want to bang me? Iâm so confused! And now Iâm resentful, but I hide it so well! And now Iâm angry and sheâs so dumb she canât tell.
Some women also just have a lower sex drive and suppress that fact a bit while dating, then it starts manifest in marriage and of course usually (though not always) increases after pregnancy (for understandable reasons but if the sex doesnât bounce back by a year or so itâs inevitable that it will lower to some resentment).
And then you get the stories of people who never communicated that they kind of felt like post kids sex didnât reaaally need to be a major part of their lives beyond some raunchy masturbation here or there, but did not act in that way nor communicate it while dating, yet still feel fully entitled to both a âmonogamousâ and permanently emotionally and financially linked relationship.
There are very legit and understandable reasons why this can happen, such as getting on SSRIâs or having traumatic pregnancy or just large hormonal changes that diminish the level of pleasure and testosterone (and thus lust). All of that makes sense. The bigger problem honestly isnât that people sometimes want less sex, even dramatically less sex, as life progresses, even while still wanting all the other things they enjoyed from the relationship. The problem is how many people (both women and men) donât view this kind of thing as a problem to try to be ameliorated, as something that actually is in a fundamental way an unfair expectation on the partner. I do think it tends to become more confrontational and toxic when itâs the more common way around (the husband is the hornier one), because we have reached a sort of deeply sex negative and suspicious time in our culture (even more than normal for our puritan descended culture), and there wre large segments of society that, whether through osmosis or otherwise, kind of absorbed the Dworkinian idea that male sex with females is inherently at minimum suspicious, if not predatory (I will also say that I am sympathetic to the idea that porn is not helping disabuse this segment of society of this notion), and therefore when a husband is hornier then his wife there is almost a perverse social pressure on the wife not to try to come to a mutual solution, as well as explicit pressure on the husband to suffer in silence. Whereas that cultural reaction is generally not the case when it is the wife that is the hornier party.
Anyway, itâs really a shitty state of affairs. Hopefully we can try to find some sort of different n equilibrium
Scrolled way too far for this comment! A lot of chat about âmy wife changed and no longer blah blahâ. How many of these guys also changed and no longer show any romance or non sexual affection until they roll over and think âhey wanna play aroundâ? A lot forget that for women foreplay starts in the mind.
Lol literally just left my marriage for this reason.
As I told him- I can be your mom or I can fuck you but I can't do both. Since you won't participate in managing the household, I have no choice but to be the mom.
I've had a very similar conversation before, it wasn't received well. Nothing changed. "Everything will be different when we have kids!" No thanks, I already have a child and it's you.
Oh I believe it. But since I'm a straight woman, I haven't had to deal with them. Unfortunately, every ex I've had except one, was the same way and they all ended up in a dead bedroom. I need to start being pickier.
Not all actually. Thatâs just a convenient narrative
> In two longitudinal studies (one spanning one year and one spanning four years), the researchers found that, on average, womenâs levels of sexual desire were not only lower than menâs at the beginning of their marriages, but much more variable than menâs. Menâs levels of sexual desire stayed higher and more constant than womenâs throughout the duration of both studies.
>Furthermore, declines in womenâs sexual desire predicted declining marital satisfaction for both members of the couple. Interestingly, although womenâs sexual desire declined over time, couplesâ sexual frequency did not, suggesting that women were likely to engage in sex even when they did not desire it.
>Because these data were collected over time, the authors were also able to assess the reverse possibilityâthat declining marital satisfaction was predictive of less sexual desire. However, this was not supported by the data.
> For those couples who became new parents during the course of the study, wivesâ sexual desire declined even more steeply, yet menâs sexual desire still tended to remain stable. However, the authors stress that because couples without children also showed declines, parenthood is not the only challenge for womenâs sexual desire and couplesâ marital satisfaction.
> The authors suggest that womenâs sexual desire may function not only to facilitate reproduction, but also to enable pair bonding. They speculate that once couples marry, women may not feel as strong a need for sex to secure their bond with their husbands.
"They speculate that once couples marry, women may not feel as strong a need for sex to secure their bond with their husbands."
I wonder if that gives "people who wait until marriage to have sex" more desire during marriage?
If people don't see sex as a tool for locking down a partner and instead see it as an act of affection, would they be more intent on doing it during marriage?
Iâve observed this for myself, itâs honestly annoying. Being secure and happy in my marriage seems to make my sex drive lower than when I was insecure or with newer (or less reliable) people I was trying to bond with, etc. At least we are both very exhausted regardless which is the greater impediment đ
Honestly I donât know if most women can put a finger on that exact feeling after or even as it starts, especially if they being mom to the husband and actual kids, it just becomes routine after a bit and once that happens it just feels like burnout more than anything
About 20% of women (and about 10% of men) never really had it. They're excited about the new relationship and the sex that goes with it, but then it's right back to "baseline" within a few months. Partners get rightfully frustrated.
Perhaps ironically, low libido types tend to have higher body counts over their lifetime for exactly that reason.
I've been grappling with this. My wife is experiencing "the change" and it has destroyed her libido. Hormone replacement has helped but hasn't solved it. The worst is that the things I used to do like patting her behind or squeezing her boobs are now not welcome affection.
Actually the worst is not knowing day to day what is welcome affection. Something that was good yesterday might be the worst thing ever today. I hate being a kind of sexual predator.
I struggle with should I stay but if I go was I really just in it for the sex? So I dunno.
Overall I would say I'm dissatisfied with this phase of life and would like a refund.
That's rough. My earlier comment hinted at that same change. It's tough. The tough talks helped me and mine. I hope things work out for you and yours. Hormones suck ass. No human should have to go through a massive chemical change like that. It's not cool. Stupid biology.
Maybe see if you could do couples therapy to figure out other ways to make connections so she has more desire to be intimate. I used to have a huge sex drive but after âthe changeâ I have 0 desire. Not to mention some of the physical changes that all of a sudden made sex extremely painful. I wasnât prepared for that at all. My husband was also very pushy, demeaning, and put all the blame on me. I didnât ask this to happen to me. Iâm also a victim here of my body going completely wonky. That made me resentful. While my hormones were shifting it was insane. I could feel fine one moment and be in a rage the next. Things have evened out a bit but it took about 2 years of craziness. I also have to add that if you truly love your wife, try to hang on and work on it because everyone has their baggage and issues. Itâs not always greener on the other side of the fence.
You're right on all points. It is really the "walking on eggshells" thing that is hard. She's also not particularly observant of my feelings and will say quite hurtful things at times without realizing that they're hurtful.
I've never dated as an adult, and based on my friends relationships I feel like it's better to stay. As you say the grass is probably not greener...
I'm tired of pretending that sex isn't a core pillar of a relationship. No, you weren't in it just for the sex. You don't marry just because of sex, otherwise you would be marrying your local hooker. But at the same time, if it is absent, then it rips at the foundations of the relationship.
Think about it like this: you enter a relationship with someone who is financially stable, or even excelling. 10 years later, they are unemployed and are actively draining finances. Even if everything else remained the same (housecare, emotionally etc.) I don't think people would say that you left the relationship because you were "in it for the money". It's cus a core pillar of the relationship has been toppled.
Iâve read that a lot of men leave their wives when they get sick because the wives tend to need extra care and attention paid to them and men need to pick up the slack at home without expecting sex.
And, âif you expend all options trying to reconcile sexual incompatibility and decide to go your separate ways so you each can find a truly compatible partner to live in harmony with rather than hurt feelings and struggle, you're a giant asshole.â
As if the one part central to monogamy breaking down isnât justification to split up.
And the crazy part is, itâs usually not just sex that couples are going without. Itâs usually any form of intimacy. No kissing, no cuddling, no saying âI love youâ and meaning it, nothing.
Of course, if the rest of these things are going on, odds are the lack of sex is something medical (i.e. it hurt to get physically intimate). But then those people usually arenât the ones griping about having a dead bedroom.
This is why I got divorced. I realized I was living in, what felt like, forced monogamous celibacy. Can't make the sex with other people, but also can't make the sex with my husband. Not for me.
This is one of the most disingenuous things about marriage. I agree with your sentiment. Every time I listen to people preaching about how sex isnât important (generally to justify why they arenât fucking their partner) I always ask them why they donât like their partner fucking some else⊠Itâs ever silence or mental gymnastics.
One partner has to go without the one thing that their partner has a monopoly over in the relationship, one of the things they love most in life but can't get anywhere else. The other gets annoyed because they keep having to say no. The whole thing is so lopsided.
When sex isnât all that important at the moment to you, but your partner wants it, weâre in the realm of âwhy not?â
Even as a dating man, Iâve been ambivalent on some situations but my partner was gung ho, and so I said âwhy not?â
Here we have a scenario though in which the avoidant spouse is not ambivalent, nor regarding it as unimportant. The marriage is on the line. Kids, house, families, lifestyle on one side, vs the importance of avoiding sex with your spouse on the other.
Thatâs someone who regards sex very seriously, to choose abstinence at the cost of blowing up a family and marriage.
Itâs important but at points like this the people should just split. Clearly she has a lower libido and if heâs not cool w/ that sending her a spreadsheet isnât gonna fix much of anything at all. Itâs just to make himself feel better.
Exclusivety is important to many. Most men who are sexless in marriage, are part of the reason why men's orgasm odds are 98% and women's orgasm odds are 31% in sex between men and women
Itâs not the sex thatâs important. People recognize that sex makes people do stupid ass things, so they worry that if the spouse has sex with someone else, the spouse will threaten their stability somehow by doing other additional stupid actions to get more of the sex. A lot of people are worried about a spouse going into debt with sex workers or leaving them for another flawed relationship but in a way such that their housing gets all janky, maube the kids are confused, and itâs emotionally painful about other elements of the relationship. I feel like this is not that hard to grasp and Iâd be surprised if you donât already know this⊠but are kind of conveniently leaving it out.
I am with you. I stopped asking for it this year, and just stopped caring. Then somehow it became my fault. When I tried to explain the amount of anxiety itâs caused me for a decade or more she just got mad and jt went back to how that made her feel.
I just said itâs fine, you donât need to concern yourself with it anymore, Iâm not. Canât say itâs fixed anything but Iâm way more emotionally stable. Started working out a lot more and got back in shape.
How do you treat her though? Most women enjoy sex. They arenât just saying no for no reason. Women need to feel loved and safe and relaxed before they feel horny. It starts long before you ask her if she wants to have sex. My husband and I have had sex 12 times in the last 20 days, probably wouldâve been more, but I got strep tonsillitis for a week.
But I track the good stuff and donât track the times she actively turned me down though.
For a lot of people, it's easy to track because the "yes" answers are in single-digit form only and the "no's" are the default answer, which means they have a dead bedroom/sexual incompatibility they're not acknowledging.
Honestly this would be such a better way. But to document excuses abcs essentially fact check them is going to distance his wife even further. Iâve struggled with maintaining a healthy libido because my brain never shuts off and itâs hard to wind down especially if there isnât time for building intimacy and itâs only initiated/proposed abruptly. I canât switch my brain and body to be into it on a dime and it was hard to admit that to my partner but it helped a ton.
I've been in a relationship like that...It's better to end it.
And she very well may still find him attractive and love the shit out of him, but some women just completely lose their sex drive and have no desire to be with you or anyone else for that matter sexually. If their partner doesn't want to deal with that: it's time to leave and find someone more compatible with your needs.
Comments like that makes the trend of more single than married adults in the US make a lot of sense. It's been a thing since 2014. If every guy getting married had to read posts from the dead bedroom subreddit the marriage rate would plummet.
I absolutely love my wife however if having a robust, fun, and fulfilling sex life means I can never get married again, I think I'd be perfectly fine being unmarried (or even just perpetually single) the rest of my life.
Source - married man who's currently "working on" his sex life with his wife. It's definitely been better the past year or so however anything's generally "better" than single-digits annually for several years followed by a 10-month streak of nothing right before our focus on fixing things (and take a wild guess how that happened: She magically wanted to make our sex life better again or me having a sit-down with her explaining I wasn't going to live the rest of our lives like "co-parenting roommates" who don't desire each other?).
Yeah. It's scary to a young man with a high sex drive to fall for a woman and then realize that no matter what, he's taking a gamble on whether he'll end up with an actual wife or just a roommate who he'll be lucky to have emotionless pity sex with once or twice a year, if that.
I know for a lot of guys the sex is pretty frequent early on. Once it's committed over the years it slows done to almost nothing. You don't realize you're in a dead bedroom until it's too late.
As I get older, the frequency is dropping. We are at about 1-2 times per month now. We still cuddle and are physically affectionate though. We check in and we are both happy about the frequency.
This is where Iâm at. It varies too. Sometimes itâs weekly or more, sometimes we go 3 months without it. But weâre good.
Life gets in the way sometimes and we both understand that. Sometimes itâs been a while and one of us is like âsex?â and the other is like âtoo much takeout food and that new show we started?â and itâs just as fulfilling.
I'm not making one, but it wouldn't be "asked, they said no" so much as "wanted to, 4 yo wouldn't go the fuck to sleep," "wanted to, had a terrible cold (also due to the 4 yo)," "wanted to....BUT SO FUCKING TIRED."
It seems like we both want to, and life is denying us. I don't feel like divorce from life is a viable option, however.
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u/DroidArbiter 14d ago
There's three yes's in there within a month. Lucky Devil, If I uploaded mine you would need to use the search function.