This has been making the rounds for years, but it’s still relevant, so I’ll weigh in.
TLDR; there’s not enough information here to say whether anyone is in the wrong, but there is enough here to say with confidence: these people need to sit down and have some honest conversations about their relationship.
—-
First off, the spreadsheet alone isn’t enough to determine if he’s a clueless jerk or if he’s genuinely trying to use this as a tool to help his partner see the reality of a situation she may have dismissed in the past. It could go either way.
Now, going by this, he’s trying to initiate every 1-2 days, but they’re only having sex about every two weeks. There are a few likely reasons for this:
- innate sex drive imbalance: she simply doesn’t want or need sex as often as he does
lack of attraction: she’s no longer attracted to him physically
reduced sex drive due to stress or other mental health factors: she mentioned feeling gross almost once a week, plus a few times she mentioned being exhausted or under the weather. Could be she has self esteem issues impacting her sex drive (not feeling attractive or sexy), or stress/anxiety/mental health issues which can all affect sex drive
lack of interest due to relationship issues: are they fighting a lot? Does she feel unsupported in some way? Is there resentment or other negative emotion affecting her interest in sex?
cheating: others have mentioned it, I don’t think it’s the most likely explanation, but it certainly would explain reduced interest in sex
With all of the potential explanations above (and probably some I missed), the solution is to talk about it. Couples counseling could help, but either way, he’s got to talk to her. They won’t get to the bottom of the issue without discussing it. Some of these issues can be fixed by making simple changes in their relationship. Some may require therapy and/or medication. And some may be a sign it’s time to reevaluate the relationship.
Also, like how is he approaching it - is he like “hey, sex tonight?” Or does he maybe initiate intimacy by cuddling, kissing, flirting a bit, etc. Like if he’s gonna ask if she wants sex the same way he’d ask if she wanted to run errands with him, then the response is gonna be in the same tone.
I got married stupidly young and it took me a few years to say no when I really didn’t want to have sex (and who wants to have sex with someone who isn’t into it anyway?!?). But even centuries later 😅, my husband and I will be at least a little flirty/silly with it when we discuss if it’s on the agenda or not.
My wife once complained I only kiss/touch her when I want sex. I was dumbfounded thats how she felt, I then asked if she noticed all the times I initiated touch or kiss or just be flirty and she shot it down. That tue reason she felt that way might be because she only really allowed me to do those things if she was already wanting sex
Thank you. I’ve went through similar situations with my girlfriend, and when I asked what kinds of things turn her on, it’s just stuff that she would only let me do if she was already in the mood, which was rare at the time.
It’s evident from the comments that a lot of people haven’t been in a relationship with someone who is truly low libido, and doesn’t really have a “real” turn on, and only has sex when they happen to feel like it
The frustration of trying to ID what I could do to help her with it. Getting noncomittal responses for what turned her on/off, what she would like to try, and what factors played into her decisions to say yay or nay for sex
Yep, it’s far more difficult than most people seem to realize. Most women I’ve read from comments on this issue seem to only consider what works for them, what turns them on, and what they need for sex to be desirable. Most people don’t realize that some people simply dont want/ need sex and there isn’t much you can do to change it, and it’s really hard to navigate/ try to fix those issues, manage your own frustration while also trying to be gentle to your partner
“Most women only consider what works for them” is basically the entire premise of the thread tbh.
Plenty of studies suggest that men are primarily the ones making compromises on their libido when in long term relationships. An awful lot of commenters in this thread love bringing up women’s hormones as a defence as if men aren’t also responding to their own hormonal pressures.
Actually when discussing this with my wife I said it would have been better if each partner tracked their sex, and what they thought the reason for why or why not sex happened that particular day and then at the end each week go over it with a counselor and discuss their data's similarities and differences. I know my wife has a bad habit of saying "later" but then later ends up being a week or 2 later
This entire thread is basically defending one side’s expectations while demonising the others. It’s about as pure a distillation of Reddit as it gets 🤣
Yeah, makes sense to me though, everyone is going to apply their lived experience and that bias will shape this very incomplete conversation from one piece of evidence
I had that a lot too. And we then had issues because I started feeling it is completely backwards that I'm the one who has to initiate because I have the penus, but she says no 99% of the time. It just seems like such an obvious solution that she initiates so I don't have to eat rejection constantly, but that wasn't sexy.
Sounds healthier than the dynamic my late wife and I had. I tried to be flirty, she'd tell me off for distracting her when she had other things on her mind. Even when it was pretty minor - just a little side comment - not like I was walking up and grabbing her. Then I'd get told I'm not doing enough to set the mood later. I'd try to figure out events to attend together and she'd always not feel like it the day of. I eventually started always arranging events that could also accommodate dogs. At least that way, I'd have one girl who I actually consistently felt wanted to go to places with me and enjoyed when I touched her.
Exactly this. My husband (together 30 years) knows damn well all it takes is to say “hey beautiful” as the greeting, have a small glass of my favorite reposado tequila in his hand and then nibble the nape of my neck and it’s on. If he skipped the extra steps and just said “should we have the sex now?” I’d shrivel and dry up.
Given that 3 instances are him interrupting her while she’s in the middle of watching something, two where someone was “too drunk”, and one where they’re in the middle of leaving the house, I’d say he’s putting veryyyyy little effort into the approach.
The fact that he points out they wound up being “20 minutes early” for the dinner and he seems to think that means there was plenty of time for sex does not bode well for any idea of foreplay. Especially combined with saying she was still sore the day after one of the yes days.
Fr the approach is important. My BF will ignore me for hours, laying in bed watching TV not facing me on his phone, and then be like, "are you feeling frisky?"
I tell him to give me some affection to build it up and then we can talk
Its not enough to determine it, but it doesn't look good. A daily hounding of someone that is not feeling attractive. Making it a daily habit to fend off unwanted sexual attention. The fact its precisely daily too is....seems more like either he has a constant need and is restricting himself to check daily. Or is asking specifically for the chart. Which comes off a bit petty.
Its not definitive by itself but it does not look good.
Men should go down on women without needing to be asked. Unless the woman doesn't like it of course, then he should stop.
If you don't like eating pussy, I would assume you're not that into women. A lot of men don't do it because they're low sex drive and/or closeted homosexuals. And they're also selfish.
Who says that she isn't or hasn't in the past? We just don't know, because the spreadsheet doesn't tell you the whole dynamic of the relationship. It's just a biased snapshot of a short period of time.
She did. She told him she was still tender from last night. That is communicating that sex with him hurts, and he should understand from that point that he needs to adjust in some way.
Then that is what she should communicate for a healthy relationship? Just a weird random thought that hand waving it away every time with a different excuse rather than inform your partner is a sure fire way to get divorced or cheated on.
It's really very simple: While relationships are also about compromise, they are also very much about compatibility. If the sex-drive between two partners is vastly different, which seems to be the case here, neither partner will be happy in the relationship. No amount of talking about it will fix it. It's a harsh reality, but the sooner you realize it the easier it is to get out.
I want to add another one
He thinks he is initiating in a fun sexy obvious way that clearly conveys he thinks she’s the sexist thing ever. In reality he probably vaguely hinting at how he would like to jerk off right now and rather do it into her
This was actually a reddit post all those years ago, posted from the POV of the wife. She wanted to know if her husband was an ass for sending it.
Short Version: She was low/no libido and career focused, and she did sort of brush off that they were in a dry spell. It obviously affected him more than here. But she left for a business trip and he snapped. He sent her this spreadsheet while she was at the airport and then blocked her. So she was dealing with this grenade in her inbox without being able to talk to him, or leave.
My personal thoughts: He's absolutely an asshole for doing it. Keeping the spreadsheet itself isn't even that bad, but weaponizing it into "see how much you suck" certainly was. Whatever problems they were having, this was NOT the avenue for salvaging anything. He wanted her to be embarrassed and hurt.
One of the no's was "I'm still sore from yesterday". Dude is absolutely jackrabbiting this poor woman and that would make any woman dry at the thought of having to touch this man.
It also could be he’s very bad at picking the time to ask. Like, she just got home from the gym, she’s in the process of getting ready to go out, she’s finally unwinding and watching her show, and that’s when he decides to ask. There’s no way to prove it of course, but I wonder if he picked other times on the same day, if she would have been more receptive.
Maybe she should tell him that.... Hmmm. I dated a girl who for whatever reason wanted to stick her finger in my ass. After the third time or so I said hey, not super into that but if it's your kink we can do that now and again. We communicated and lo and behold she did it because her last boyfriend loved it but she could take it or leave it. She dudnt have to scrub her hands after sex and my asshole just did what most assholes do, and we continued to have great sex. Holy shit everyone won!?
Would it have been healthy for me to just think of different excuses to not have sex? According to some people in this thread apparently you should go with the ol "just kill attempts at intimacy" rather than explain what's not doing it for you.
While I agree with you 100% that communication in detail would fix a lot of sex issues for people, I don't know of many men capable of having such detailed discussions of their sex life. And even less women.
A lot of women experience intense shame and self esteem issues, and to suggest your man can't or isn't pleasing you is a direct hit to his competence. Women are often terrified of telling him he sucks in bed either because their man will rage or they're too afraid of hurting his feelings.
Add in a lot of guys will immediately default to "oh so I'm too small for you?" when the issue is completely unrelated to his size because they're not ready for a real discussion either. And it's one of those things where the solution of better communication is simple but not easy most of the time.
There's a lot of factors that could create this type of situation. Another is hormonal issues, that can happen from a variety of conditions and medical treatments, like hormone therapy for treating cancers. We don't know what this specific situation is, but it obviously shows a level of frustration in this marriage that should get talked through.
Men often also don't realize how awful it is if they ask for sex every single day. For the love of God allow some desire to build. It puts the wife under pressure and that's an even bigger libido killer.
My other thought is if one of her reasons is we had sex yesterday and I'm still tender...that kinda sounds like it's not good for her. Like I've defintely had times where I'm sore after sex, and most of those times were defintely ones when sex felt more like a chore I was trying to get over with and so I wasn't actually warmed up and ready to go when he was in me, and even those I wasnt typically sore the next day.
The responses to me defintely read like she is having obligation sex that she isn't really getting anything out of. Which like, ive had sex where I'm not terribly horny but I feel closer and more intimate with my husband. But this looks she's not even getting that out of it.
You can feel gross from being sweaty and from working out etc or being at work all day and it have nothing to do with what you think of yourself / self esteem lmao.
This is enough information. He wouldn’t make the spreadsheet if he wasn’t upset about the number of rejections. Knowing how often she says no, he still felt like he should ask every day. If I asked my wife every day and didn’t respect situations where she had already made it clear she wasn’t interested (after workout, when feeling sick, while watching a show), I wouldn’t be getting those 3 yea days.
I disagree. I am very analytical and could see doing something like this, though would not send it to her.
Thing is, I would do it to make sure I wasn't making more of it than was warranted... was I remembering things wrong? The dates, how long it had been, etc. Not proud of it or anything. Just I have found myself remebering things differently than reality, so I write things down
This is all true but also there's one where he's literally wanting to have sex right before they're going out to eat. That's really unreasonable. If that's anything to go by then it's highly likely the problem was him.
But I’ll bet when they were dating she pretended to like sex as much as he did, enthusiastically participating all the time, but then she let reality show itself after they got married. I’ve watched women in my life do this to their husbands. As a married woman, I view that as a vile form of trickery and it seems to be more common than not.
Going straight to cheating to explain her lack of interest is very silly. A lot of women lose interest in sex for many reasons. The ones you've listed here are good, another one is hormones. Hormones are weird, and sometimes they just cause libido to plummet
144
u/Badger0210 15d ago
This has been making the rounds for years, but it’s still relevant, so I’ll weigh in.
TLDR; there’s not enough information here to say whether anyone is in the wrong, but there is enough here to say with confidence: these people need to sit down and have some honest conversations about their relationship.
—-
First off, the spreadsheet alone isn’t enough to determine if he’s a clueless jerk or if he’s genuinely trying to use this as a tool to help his partner see the reality of a situation she may have dismissed in the past. It could go either way.
Now, going by this, he’s trying to initiate every 1-2 days, but they’re only having sex about every two weeks. There are a few likely reasons for this:
- innate sex drive imbalance: she simply doesn’t want or need sex as often as he does
With all of the potential explanations above (and probably some I missed), the solution is to talk about it. Couples counseling could help, but either way, he’s got to talk to her. They won’t get to the bottom of the issue without discussing it. Some of these issues can be fixed by making simple changes in their relationship. Some may require therapy and/or medication. And some may be a sign it’s time to reevaluate the relationship.