I'm almost 45 years old and have almost no libido either. I know that stress in my marriage accounts for a lot of it - but can it account for all of it? I am NEVER horny anymore. As far as checking with her doctor, MY doctor said there's not much that can be done until they create a Viagra for women. Is that true?

Ok, so I'm in a similar boat as Jimmym. I am a doting father (two kids - 8 and 9), treat my wife with respect. I wash dishes, cook, clean, take care of the yard, the kids, etc. My wife and I share everything....but intimacy. 1 year and a half ago, she tells me she's not "in" love with me. Loves me, but not "in" love. At first I was devastated. But I bought and read every book on the subject and learn a ton about myself (I've changed bad behaviors) and our relationship. My wife does not believe volumes of data on personal growth and intimacy. She grew up in watching an emotionally abusive marriage. Please tell me next steps. Like jimmym, I'm at my wits end!

Backpacker

when i have tried to talk to her about this she admits that she is leaving us both out. but nothing changes. i feel like we are becoming roommates instead of husband and wife. i just dont know what to do anymore. we went to bed together and she wiggles her back (the sign for a back massage. i oblige and then she falls asleep. i am left laying there with all this pent up desire and if i do anything i feel like a pervert.... with my own wife.. as far as a doctor. she had part of her thryoid removed earlier this year and she is on synthroid, but other than that, she is in perfect health. in fact she is training to run a marathon on her 40th birthday. i guess i am going to end up sitting in front of the computer all night again.. crawl into bed before she gets up and go on with it all..

Ok, I am that guy too. I help a lot around the house and I have a lot of opportunity to do so because, even though I work hard, I do it from home so I am available to help out and be a good husband that much more. Your post is very interesting to me as even though the problem we share isn't uncommon, we share a lot of similaraties.. My wife also has a thyroid issue (although after you said your wife has had hers removed and that hasn't improved your sex life at all doesn't give me a lot of confidence). I also stay up on the computer as a sort of 'escape' and have for a very long time. Recently I invested in a nice game console and play games until very late and honestly that has been a great distraction. I know that hasn't and won't help our relationship, but it has been great way for me to blow off steam and not worry about what I'm missing out on in the bedroom. Unfortunately for us though, we are both in our 20's and your post doesn't give me a lot to look forward to...

I read Anna's comments...but my wife too is in great shape, she's a personal trainer, so no health problems. Both of us in our mid to late 40's. I have tried so many things with her, "40 Day Love Dare" from the movie "Fireproof" (worth doing at individual level), counseling for about 6 months (she quit, "It wasn't doing anything for me" and "I don't believe it will help"). I've read books, books and more books. "Getting the Love You Want" is the latest. She's doing the exercises with me, but her effort is half-hearted and the minimum required.

I don't want to leave my marriage, I love my wife and honestly want to spend the rest of my life with her. But that lack of intimacy in our relationship keeps getting in the way of so many other things. I see it and ask for her help in the marriage, but don't get much.

My wife has always told me that I was a "2%" guy. She had been divorced 9 years before we met and when we met I treated her then the same as I do now. She is my wife and best friend and mother of our children. I just cant figure out why she either doesnt like or enjoy or doesnt want sex anymore. I still bring her flowers at work for no reason other than I like the smile it puts on her face. I still offer to anything I can to help her out. I AM JUST SO FRUSTRATED SLEEPING BY MYSELF EVEN WHEN WE ARE IN BED TOGETHER.

I appreciate this forum letting me at least express my frustrations

(chuckles)... well, according to her and her friends.. 95% of guys are jerks and ***holes, 3% are gay and there are only 2% of guys that are decent. (she was married to an alcholic jerk for 3 years. it was not easy for her, but we did get the two boys and that is a blessing). I hope no one reading this get the wrong idea, I am not the perfect guy (much as i would like to think i am). but i am trying everything i can think of to be more responding and loving and attentive. I love my wife and kids with all my heart and there is not a question of me ever leaving. I dont drink, smoke, do drugs, and my wife and i teach sunday school. she is training for a marathon and i bring the little ones to the races and we wait at the finish line with signs and try to encourage her in every way. my point is that we do things together, but we never seem to make that "love connection" anymore. I am guessing in the last 2 or 3 years we have make love a half dozen times.

and i hate to say this but to me it felt like "pity sex" her just "giving in" to get me to leave her alone. on the question of foreplay, I am just going to come out and say I have that covered. I have taken massage classes and give a great body massage, oils, candles and all. i love to kiss her all over and i especially love to go downtown. (not sure of the explicit language requirements here). we have even dabbled in the silk ties and feather duster. when we were dating and for many years after we were married, she love for me to "perform" all my tricks. when someone grabs your head and wont let you go, you must be doing something right. this all stopped 2 or 3 years ago. just like a light switch. we both have regular checkups, are both healthy and at 42, i dont feel like i am past any kind of prime. no matter what i do, i still end up frustrated, sitting in front of the computer watching hulu and playing spider solitare.

Heidi - I can pretty much parrot back everything jimmym has done. Sadly over the course of the last few years I've tried everyone of your suggestions as well. I've done date nights, she no longer wants to do them because she says they're too expensive, even though the last few I did cost nothing. In fact, last year I built a collapsible massage table secretly with wood I had around the shop and surprised her with candles, a CD of a thunderstorm and a hour+ massage with scented oils. I give her a massage like now almost monthly. Like jimmym, I don't either of us lack the creativity or effort of whoo-ing our spounse nor do we lack in committment to the relationship.

What I found interesting was his comment on his wife's ex being an alcoholic jerk so I going to assume there was some level of emotional abuse there. That is a common thread between our wives, where my wife grew up watching an emotionally abusive marriage. She will tell you her father was a wonderful father, but a horrible

husband. I feel like that is the root of the problem in my relationship with my wife is there is a fear of committment. If she commits to th emarriage or me, she can get hurt after what she saw her father do to her mother. If she keeps me at arms length emotionally, I can't hurt her.

Unfortunately, in the counseling we did last year, the counselor didn't pick up on that issue and only focused on martial relations.

I too hate pity sex. It drives me crazy, I try to entice, seduce or come up with something new in the repretoire to get her engaged. I've tried so many ways of foreplay, I've lost track. In fact there are times when she's actually implied "hurry up"...not in so many words, but the message is right there. Talk about a cold glass of water in the face. So I end up "hurrying" to appease her some level and end up feeling like some kind of pervert with my wife.

Ian - with all due respect, your comments may be wise for someone married a few years and their 20's, but to me

they ring a bit hollow. I know what a connection making love is to my wife, I feel it at an incredible level on the rare occasion we do. It has gone way beyond "the act" and the physical release to a bond and opening of emotion. In all honesty if I could get that level of intimacy without the physical aspect of it, I'd do it in a heartbeat and our marriage would be great. But sadly, humans aren't built that way...at least I'm not.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm in this for the long haul, for better or worse. I'm trying to make it better by focusing on my poor behaviors I can change, 'cause I can only change me. But I would dearly love my beautiful wife to recognize that she too made the same vow I did and look inward a bit to help our relationship and marriage. And to add to the mix our kids are watching. I don't want them to see a distant wife and an ever pursuing husband as their idea of what a marriage looks like.

so backpacker... online games of halo? i am usally on the computer from 11 till 3am... i do do feel your pain. its like the person we promised to love, honor and cherish has said "your okay enough to keep around, but... your not okay enough to make love to." i know i will get flak for that comment, but thats how it feels

Ah, the resentment is profound on this board... and with good reason. There is some excellent advice provided by the experts here, but I can sympathize with the feeling of having tried everything and being at wits end. Just last night I gave her the impression that I would dedicate some time to her in the evening and when the time came I helped tidy the house, helped w/ the kids, got all cleaned up and set the mood with some candles before she came in. She enters the bedroom, and, annoyed, "The only time you want to hang out with me is because you want sex." Candles went right out HaHa. She's not really wrong, though, and as suggested by the experts here I need to invest more time into trying to connect with her without the expectation of sex. Problem for me, is that I would be WAY way more inclined to spend time with her if she would throw some hot sex into the mix every so often. As it is, sex so infrequent that I'd rather do other things instead of getting shot down 9/10 times.

... also, I wanted to add that for me one of the most confusing things is that when we DO have sex, she seems to really enjoy it (and she's just not the type of person who would fake anything just for the sake of getting it over with or to make me happy). Like with backpacker, she has asked me to hurry it up with the sex here and there, but I always bring her to climax during foreplay and she raves about how much she enjoys it, etc... But yet the frequency in sex never increases. So what's up?? Last night she told me that she feels obligated and dreads it for the most part, which really hurt my feelings. I seem to get a lot of mixed signals from her because when I show disinterest she complains that we are never intimate, but then when I put forth the effort, than sex is the only thing I think about and I'm pressuring her into something she doesn't want to do.

jimmym - although I'm a big fan of Master Chief, I live Halo vicariously though my nephews. :-)

Ya, your comment about your wife's sentiment is similiar to what I experience. She wants to be "married" but only to a point. And that point is her chosing, not mine. There are times when i feel more like a brother or roommate.

drock, I too tried the "pulling away" method too. I thought, "hey, you want space, I can give it too you". I did it in a loving manner, not mean. I was very specific with my wife in any discussion with her about it. If you don't want to act married, then I'll stop for you. I'll do this for you.

Well, as you've experienced, a few days after it was, "why are you so distant"? Suddenly she lost the control that she unconsciously craved, she didn't have control of the power struggle, I gave her what she demonstrated she wanted in her actions. And she hated it! So I thought I would use that as a discussion point as we attempted to talk in counseling last year.

Alas, nothing really came of it for any realization on her part. She has built up such defenses over the years that she has no idea what she's doing sometimes.

My wife recently confessed to me (through some exercises we're doing from a book) that she laid in bed as a 4-7 year old listening to her parents scream at each other in the middle of the night. I picture her as that little girl curled up hugging her pillow shutting out all emotion to protect herself and dissapate that fear. That helps me when I get angry about our situation. I'm frustrated still, but I at least understand the unconscious motivation she has putting the barriers up between us. And gives me hope of her someday recognizing that need to grow, open her heart and really experience the true joy that you, drock and I experience when we each look at our wife's.

So we keep plugging away, right? I can tell you both I started keeping a journal awhile ago when this started

and writing down the daily interactions, discussions, thoughts, etc has really helped me. It's helped me when my wife will tell me something that's she thinks she done but didn't and I have some kind of record to the contray....it helps me keep my sanity. It's also really helped me recognize behaviors I needed to change with her, things I could do better. I'm certainly no saint and need to continually work on "me' to make "us" better. I can't change her, I can only change me. And I hope that in the long slow, painful conversations we do have about this, that she'll recognize that and will slowly begin to understand what she needs to do.

Ian is bang-on on his comment that the brain is biggest sex organ. I get that, I think all of us do too. But the question is how do we get our spouses to recognize that? And more importantly how do we help them understand and realize the wonderful benefit they'll experience by opening themselves up to change and us?

That gentlemen is the $64,000 question. It's not sex that I want. Sex is the by-product of the intimacy that I want to share with my wife.

A bit of blog here on my part...obviously no easy answers. But it's good to know there are other 2% men out there! I like that term, 'cause I like to think of myself as out of the good ones. My wife tells me I fit that category too...so round and round we go.

I'm still open to listening to all advice on getting the proverbial horse to water and then motivating them to drink!

I want to echo Ian. I am proud of the guys looking and comment here. It helps me to know I am not the only one going thru this and that there are other guys struggling, but not giving up on their marriages and wifes. Backpacker had a great statement..... it is not SEX we want, but the sex is the byproduct of the intimacy we crave. We are human and God made us to be together with our wifes. I get the same "gushy" feeling when we are just sitting on the couch watching a movie or holding hands walking thru the park. But again I am human and I do need that intimate touch and contact also. I love my wifes body, she is more beautiful today that the day we met. I just feel rejected and neglected when she used to "jump" me every chance she could and now she pushes me away when i start getting frisky.
I have said this before and I will say it again. there is no thought of me leaving or cheating. thats not me. I am proud to be a 2% guy.

Thanks Ian. You raise a great question. I hope I operate under a full disclosure model with my wife, I try too. I picked this link up of Foxnews.com about a week ago. I send her links from that occasionally on topics like this.

In all honesty she thinks the profession of psychology is smoke and mirrors (my words interpreting her comments) Regularly her comments when we read something together where men or women are expressing something tramatic or troubling, she'll say "grow up" or "act like an adult". I suspect these are comments she heard as a kid directed at her or maybe by her parents to each other in the heat of an argument when someone was looking for some sort of emotional connection.

My wife can be the most generous, giving, selfless, person when it comes to our kids, other family members or friends. But when it comes to me, I think of "Star Trek" and "Shields up!!"

When we did counseling last year, it was for about 5 months roughly. We met our counselor on a weekly basis. We were given exercises to do every week to work on deeping our relationship. My wife had (and has) a very difficult time doing those. She basically quotes Popeye "I ams what I ams". I say that tongue in cheek, but that's her attitude. She doesn't believe she can change. She doesn't believe love is a choice.

I'm sure there are guys reading this thread thinking, "what a spineless putz Backpacker". But I committed my life to her, and as they say in the ceremony, in good times and bad. This is very much bad, but I truly believe there are good times on the other side. I'd just like to figure out if this is a 10k or marathon.

Backpacker...your wife blames her lack of desire for intimacy on growing up witnessing a dysfunctional relationship between her parents. What message does she think your current relationship is passing on to your children?

From what you and jimmym are saying I don't think you're asking for anything unreasonable. I can't imagine living like that with apparently no expectation things will ever get better.

I've gone through a divorce so maybe my position is merely justification for my failure but I think at some point the two of you have to have a serious talk with your spouses. If they're not prepared to at least meet you halfway maybe they're not as committed to the marriage as you are and I think you have a decision to make. Ultimately of course I'm hoping that by having that discussion with your spouses it will be a wakeup call to them leading them to work with you on establishing the intimacy you crave.

jimmym | Aug 27, 2010 at 11:38 AM wrote: I have said this before and I will say it again. there is no thought of me leaving or cheating. thats not me. I am proud to be a 2% guy.

Well guys here is where this gets you. Long story but the sum of it is! No sex in 10 years. She knows you will not leave. I have had a great time helping raise two kids to be young adults. Daughter is now 19 and in second year of collage. Son 17 just started senior year in High School. Both are good kids and I could go on and on about them. But the down side is there is nothing of a relationship with the other person. Thanks to the courts she can count on half my retirement and a nice amount of money for life I suspect. I made the choice to stay married to ensure I could be with the kids. Counseling been there tried that. She was a rock. Good luck

Paul - my wife doesn't blame her lack of intimacy on anything. She has always been that way in her mind. This is marriage #2 for both of us.

Yes, when we started out it was your typical early marriage with no kids, lots of time to spend with each other, a higher level of attention to each other, more intimacy (at least attempted) etc. Now she can pour that attention on our kids rather than me. In all the reading I've done, it seems this is not atypical with the onset of motherhood.

I agree with you, on the comment of what our kids are seeing. We can can hug and kiss in public, it's the intimacy piece that she struggles with, things the kids shouldn't see. Like I said, she tries albeit at a minimum level....so she is working at it, although certainly not at the pace I'd like. I'm a bit Type A, so when I go after something, it's pretty much all consuming for me. That's one thing I had to realize early on was I couldn't smother her with my desire to "fix" this.

Obviously there's no easy answer. At the end of the day you can't change her behaviour you can only change your own.

If she's working on it, hopefully at the same time communicating to you how you can help her, thats all you can ask for. As you say you can't smother her with attempts to "fix" it as that's just too much pressure on everyone involved.

Thanks for the links Emily. I think they are great, however I'm not sure I'll be able to get my wife to read them. You see, I think this goes beyond lost intimacy with her. I think that someway she doesn't even feel she is deserving of pleasure.

We had a nice discussion last night, our Sunday evening book exercises from "Getting the Love You Want". I told her I was on this forum and talked to her about all the many other men and women with similiar situations as we're going through. She has no interest to even go here, so this issue runs deeper with her than just a loss of libido. This is something that will require more than her and I discussing it I feel. But like an alcoholic, she needs to admit to herself that she has a deeper issue first before she seeks help.

I am 23 years old and know nothing about marriage and children. I can't say I know much about long term relationships either. But I have been witness to two very important things that have kept my parent's marriage happy: Individual passions and sense of humor. Both my mother and father are passionate about separate things. I've noticed that because they have developed crafts that are separate from each other, they are able to look upon each other with respect. Not only are they attentive and loving, as many of you are, but they see each other as independents with their own individual freedoms and talent. Doing something on your own that you are passionate about may inspire your wife to look at you in a refreshing way, which can ignite new passion between the both you.

And of course, make each other laugh! It brings lightness and joy into any relationship, as well as releases endorphins that can awaken sexual desire. It is also the most attractive attribute I find in any man

Did not mean to post that twice.

Also I know these are two simple suggestions to a very complicated subject, but I hope they may help in some way

Jennifer, what great insight for such a young person! I'm sure you're parents are able to communicate very well with each other as well. I'm glad they have taught you some very valuable lessons. I know those are some of the things that attracted my wife and I to each other was our passion and sense of humor. We still do laugh at ourselves and each other. I hang on to that as my link back to her in these difficult times. Thank you for your comments.

i am missing the comments here. i hope everyone is to busy doin' it... we are working together. talking is the most important thing. and DONT LOSE FOCUS. sex is not love, sex is not marriage, sex is not... a lot of things. sex is a byproduct of love and affection and trust between man and wife. sex can be the most wonderful pleasurable thing, if both people are "ready, willing and able". but sometimes 1 or both aren't. i thank all the commenters here. you have been a source of strength and hope.

James Mustang

Jimmym, I agree with you, the comments have been a source of strength and hope for me as well. It's been interesting to see that there are just as many women out there as men in similiar situations, that it's not a gender issue.

My wife and I have had a bit of break-through this week. It's a positive step forward and I think that's what we are always looking for.

I've mentioned above that we're doing the exercises in "Getting the Love You Wanted", we're about halfway through and things are starting to get better.

I'm in no way saying this is the ultimate book in solving relationship/inimacy issues, but it's the one that seems to be working for us. I've personally read upwards of 15 or so books like this in the last year and a half. We've attempted counseling as well. And I keep my journal. That's been my/our journey so far.

James, since you and I have had the most interaction here I'll say to you but mean the message to all men and women in this situation...hang in there and keep plugging away. I know it's difficult, but the reward at the end will be tremendous. Keeping working with your spouse, but also look inward and study yourself. That may be the most difficult piece. But if your spouse see's that you're willing to change yourself, then they may look inward themselves and join you in that willingness to grow as individuals and a couple.

I also sense a strong faith in you as well James. Keep that as your rock, anchor yourself there. Let Him be your guide. That has been the most important thing for me.

My wife and I have a long road ahead of us yet, I have no illusions that we're in the homestretch. I'm not even sure if there is a homestretch any more and that this is a journey. But I am sure that we are TOGETHER on the road right now.

Being together and working as a couple right now is tremendously rewarding and uplifting for me. It is a type of intimacy, emotional intimacy and the path toward physical intimacy.

Best of luck to you all, thank you for your comments and most importantly know I keep you in my prayers.

Mark