Lost Libido? Normal Sex After Childbirth
January 4, 2007 by kate baggott
Filed under Mental Health
Sex. I hate talking about it, but “new mother + sex” is a rather popular search term on the Internet. This is an era when a feminist should be able to talk about anything. I imagine many searchers are new mothers who are wondering when desire will return, when they will be able to relax and not think about what had to be stitched back together. Other searchers are probably men, like my husband, who will find the one or two references that contradict the conventional wisdom of waiting 6 to 8 weeks after the birth.
These men really need to start getting up in the night with their babies. Then, they will be too tired to even think about sex either. They also might find that their wives and children like them more, that they are truly engaged in family life.
On the other hand, after our first was born, my husband said that the new baby made him feel so emotional, so full of love, that romance seemed like a natural extension to what he was feeling. With our second child, he just hid out at work until most of the hard work was done each day.
It is normal not to feel like doing it after you’ve had a baby. Getting up at night, breastfeeding, fear of getting pregnant again too soon and feeling used all contribute to a seriously deflated libido. And, really, wanting to get your groove back is admirable, as long as you’re doing it for yourself. I am not sure that any relationship benefits from “OK, I’ll do it for you” sex.
Or does it?
So much about giving birth and becoming a mother does pitch us into something primal, something traditonal, something role-ish that can make sex feel like a duty. Many relgious women from a variety of faiths have been taught that sex is just another duty to be performed. And, long term breastfeeding is returning from medical exile, from a time when doctors advised women to put their babies on bottles of forumla 6 to 8 weeks after birth so that she would again be sexually available to her husband, who in return, wouldn’t abandon the family, leaving them dependent on the state.
While I think a sexless period after the birth of a child is normal, many women still feel guilty that they just don’t feel like it. Still others feel pity for their poor, sexually-deprived partners. Both those emotions certainly don’t appeal to my libido.
What do you think is normal? What would you tell a close friend who asked? If you don’t want to leave a comment, check out the poll on the side bar.
I just want to chime in with an update that may be very useful to some couples out there.
As I stated in my last post, my wife has decided to go off the pill and try an IUD instead. She has been off the pill for two months now and so far it looks like it was a good idea. At this point its way too early to say how the change has affected her libido, but she is no longer having headaches and says that she generally feels happier. Its like the pill had put her into a semi-permanent state of mild depression. She didn’t really feel sad, but she was generally lacking in motivation for all things.
Since then she has done some reading and found that there are lots of other women who had the same thing happen. When they tried to go back on the pill after having kids it had all kinds of affects that they did not get the first time around (pre-kids). Headaches, depression and loss of libido are apparently common for women who go back on the pill after being away from it for a long time.
Obviously there are lots of other things that can cause loss of libido, but if you are in a situation where by all rights you should want sex but don’t, maybe the pill is part of the problem.
well.. i have had and iud since april of 08. and i still have no libido.. i do the duty sex just keep my marriage happy but i dont always enjoy it. i dont know why but i just dont want it i dont need it.. i just do it.. it has abecome a chore on my list.. any thoughts on that?
Dear Tiffany
you and ma wife behave the same….. even i am also finding the solution to overcome of the situation…. is there any body who tell us about the same… my wife never wants to do love making.
Louie, your needs are just that, needs, not wants. People who don’t have good sex lives die younger, are less happy and less healthy – she is damaging you.
Tell her you’re going to have to find someone else to have sex with. But mean it when you say it, don’t do it just to manipulate her, and start looking.
that does not work sorry, when my husband tells me that i just tell him go ahead cuz i know hes not going to do that is the stupidest thing i have ever heard lol!
I found this blog after searching for an article I read about sex after fatherhood. The article was talking about things I long to have/feel. I wanted to got back to it and blog because I don’t think I will ever have/feel that again. I will be married for 5 years now in September. My daugther will be 3 in July. Since finding out she was pregnant, we’ve had sex 3 times (once during pregnancy and 2 times after). It’s been 9 months since the last time. I feel guilty for beeing upset, but at the same time, I think it’s BS. We were doing great. I feel used. I feel she got what she wanted, but now she’s done with me physically. I’m not the “dead beat” dad that you hear about above and in other places. I don’t bury myself in work to avoid helping with kids (we have 2 because we adopted one). The kids love me and rarely act out to get my attention because I avoid them. At this point, I’d even settle for the very first blog about a cuddle while masterbating, but that won’t happen. I tried masterbating in front of her years ago to show my frustration and all she can say is “You’re gross”. I masterbate almost every day, not trying to hide it but I can’t do it in front of her. All I can do is hope she might eventually care. Every time I make a mistake, feel lazy, say something insensitive, etc, all I get is “That’s why I never have sex with you”. I’d love to try counciling, talking about it, what ever, but she never wants to talk about it.
Paul, I feel sorry for you. My wife has had similar behavior, but your situation is even worse than mine. My guess (and of course it’s only a guess since I know very little of your situation) is that your wife lost her sex drive like mine–either on becoming pregnant (due to hormone changes?) or some time before (due to the passage of time and loss of the novelty of love?). If the latter was the case, she may have continued with sex anyway in order to become pregnant. She might have been as surprised by this loss of sex drive as you were, or she might have known about it before and hidden it either hoping her desire would return or that at least she could endure it long enough to have children. Anyway, we have no way of knowing, and it is a moot point now.
People can have odd reactions to major changes like this, especially involving a taboo subject like sex. Instead of accepting her loss of sex drive and dealing with it honestly and openly with you, which would take a great deal of courage, she may feel her marriage (and pride and honesty) threatened and become defensive, reacting (not necessarily consciously) by rationalizing her loss of sex drive as your fault. That would protect her feelings and make you feel guilty. Again, that reaction is probably not her fault either, but may be a common and natural (although destructive) defense mechanism. Anyway, I’m just spouting ideas from my head, with no evidence other than the way-too-many sleepless nights I’ve spent trying to think what’s gone so terribly wrong with our formerly great marriage. And my ideas don’t solve your problem.
You might read a book called “The Sex-Starved Marriage” for some perspective, although I don’t think it can help change your situation if your wife doesn’t want to change it. Personally, I’ve tried to go through possible solutions, but as each one fails, I’m facing a choice of either:
1) a lifetime with little sex or
2) divorce, followed by finding a girlfriend but not marrying again, and possibly finding a new girlfriend every few years if the same thing happens even without children
These are bleak choices since I hoped marriage would be companionship and sex, not companionship or sex. But unfortunately sex is necessary to my happiness, thus I am leaning toward option 2 because it seems a terrible waste to live a sad life. I hope there is a way to be divorced without hurting our children or my wife. I’m thinking of living as close to them as possible so that I can spend time with our children every day. But I’m sure there will be some problems with such an arrangement.
One thing I’ve noticed is that my wife not only lost her sex drive, but also her desire for excitement or passion. Her passion was music, and she is a music teacher, but it’s now been years since she listened to any of her hundreds of CDs for pleasure. Did anything similar happen to your wife?
I hope you find a happy solution for your family. At least remember that there are many people in the world suffering the same fate; you are not alone. We can at least feel some solidarity in our pain.
Larry – It sounds like the problems your wife is hasving go way beyond losing her sex drive, If she has also given up other things that used to bring her great pleasure (music) then she is probably suffering from depression.
I know this is not what you want to hear, but if you walk out on your family now her depression will only get worse. And by the way, there is no way that you can leave your family without hurting them. It dosen’t matter if you live in the house right next door and come over to visit every day, they will still feel abandoned.
If you really love your family then you should be working with your wife to find a way to cure her depression before making plans to move on. At the very least you need to urge her to talk to a therapist. Make it clear that you are unhappy with the current state of your marriage and if she refuses to get help then you are not sure you can continue with her.
Anyone living in an intolerable marriage eventually has to reach this point. Whether its abuse, alcholism, gambling or emotional neglect the course of action is the same. State that you are unhappy and that you will leave if things do not improve, and give her a legitimate chance to work with you to find a solution.
It should be noted that new moms with small kids rarely have much of a sex drive.
Ian, I have to disagree with your last post. Sex is a “want” and not a “need”. I need the love and respect of my wife, but I don’t actually need sex from her (although I really really want it).
You and I have both been posting on this forum for a long time, and we have both had our ups and downs. I have re-read posts that I made further up, and I won’t pretend to be a different person than the one who wrote those other posts, but I can also see the flaws in my own logic.
Our lack of a sex life has very much affected my happiness over the past several years, but these days I feel like I have turned a corner and I am finally coming to grips with it. The question I had to ask myself was this : What if something happened to make sex impossible in my relationship with my wife. What if she developed a medical condition such that she could no longer have sex. Is sex so important to me that I would leave her over this? The answer was no, I would not leave her. I would find a way to make the relationship work and be genuinely happy without sex.
So if I know that that is the decision I would make regarding a question of how to spend the rest of my life, then why is it so hard for me to accept that sex is (tempoarily I hope) not a part of my day to day life right now?
Obviously things are not really that simple. My wife does not have a physical condition that prevents her from having sex. She is choosing to not have sex. However, I am not willing to leave her, or cheat on her in order to get sex. So I guess the only choice I have is to try and be happy while I wait for her to come back to wanting sex again.
Some people would say that I am being a sucker, or that my wife takes me for granted, or that I am putting up with something that I should not have to put up with. But, I don’t care. I know that I love my wife and I want to spend the rest of my life with her so I will find a way to make this work.
Louie,
Thanks for your reply. Yes, you are probably right that leaving my family would make them feel abandoned. This is a horrible situation with no good solution. But at least I’ve gained some knowledge: that marriage is often bad. I wouldn’t wish our fate on anyone else. To save young people from following our footsteps and suffering as we have, I would advise them not to marry (unless they don’t care much about sex or unless they strongly want children), and instead to find a boyfriend or girlfriend and not have children and not commit to a lifetime together but to agree to leave each other if either one changes drastically. The point of a relationship should be to make both people happy, and it should end if being together makes either person sad. I don’t know why people don’t warn others about this; is it that most marriages are happy, and I’m just weird or unlucky? Or is it that people don’t care what suffering other people undergo? Or is it that evolution selects for individuals and societies that encourage marriage and children and selects against any behavior leading to childlessness? I guess all of the above.
As for her having depression, perhaps it’s true. I have urged her to see a counselor many times, but she adamantly refuses. I’ve suggested she quit her job, which she constantly complains about and which she claims she dreams of being fired from, but she won’t. I’ve tried for years to not complain or put any pressure on her about sex or anything else, and just to absorb the pain and pressure myself, but I can’t stand this forever. I don’t know what else I can do.
“New moms with small kids rarely have much of a sex drive.” I wish I’d known that before we had kids; then I wouldn’t have had kids. That may sound horrible, but I am sad now and was happy before we had kids. I am not a bad person or dad. I love my kids, and my son is a wonderful, smart, caring person who is probably my best friend. My aunt recently told me that I’m an excellent father, and she may be biased, but I think I’m doing a good job. But if we hadn’t had children, my wife might still love me and like sex (though maybe not; who knows?), and we’d have much more free time for sleep, romance, travel, charity, writing books, or other things that would make us happier, fulfilled, and able to help other people.
As for Louie’s response to Ian above, determining whether sex is a “want” or a “need” is like determining whether shelter or friendship or freedom or a 2nd kidney are wants or needs. You can usually live without them, but people will be affected to different extents, physical and emotional. Some people would suffer terribly if they were homeless, and might even die if in a very cold place, while other people might feel uncomfortable but could tolerate it, and others might actually prefer not living within 4 walls and would refuse housing. Sex, like anything else, lies on a continuum between things necessary for physical life, like air and food, and things wanted, like a luxury car, and continuing all the way to things unwanted and then to things that would end life, like poison. Each person arranges things in a different order on the continuum, and the order changes with circumstances, such as having children. Personally, I’d put sex about even with shelter or with hearing. In other words, if I had to choose between homelessness and sexlessness, or between deafness and no sex, either choice would be a toss-up. I guess my wife would put sex on the negative side, about on par with divorce or bankruptcy. Your question–would you leave your wife if she had a medical condition making her unable to have sex with you?–is instructive. I feel ashamed to say that I would answer yes. I feel like an awful person to admit that, and I want to rush to defend myself by saying that I am a good person who devotes all my free time to my family, that I donate large contributions to charities, that I donated gallons of blood over the years and am considering donating a kidney (though I haven’t yet), that my job is biomedical research aiming to cure disease. But maybe my sex drive is just too strong to give up happiness in order to be only a companion. If the situation were reversed, for example if I had dementia, I wouldn’t want to burden my wife to be my nurse and give up her time to take care of me when all I could do would be to be a companion and not a lover. I’d feel better to be in a nursing home so that she could be free, and I could make friends with the other patients and staff there.
Louie, I apologize for my long rambling about myself. I think that everyone can be quite different, and that there’s no absolute right and wrong. We should just try to make ourselves and other people happy. This is difficult because each of us wants different things, and on top of that, we each may change drastically. Living is thus like a game of 4-dimensional chess. If you are happier loving your wife than having sex, and your wife is too, then that’s good. You have found your path of happiness, and I support you to follow it. I wish you all the best!
It’s worth repeating, it’s scientifically proven, people with good sex lives are happier, healthier and live longer.
These women are, literally, killing us!
It is a responsibility of being in a committed relationship to do whatever you can make your partner happy and not shorten his life!
If you have no libido it is a responsibility to get some help – to try anything and everything that might help improve the situation. That applies to men and women alike.
Larry
A large part of why I am willing to put up with no sex right now is become I know that my wife loves me, and her reasons for avoiding sex have very little to do with me personally. Every other aspect of our relationship is great.
It sounds like your marriage is actually bad on more than one front and your wife is refusing to admit there is a problem.
However, I still stand by my earlier statement that if you intend to leave her then you should at least give her some warning first and give her a chance to try and get back to good. If she knows you are unhappy, and that you intend to leave her if things don’t change, and she still refuses to go to councelling then I guess that would speak volumes. I would never suggest that someone should just suck it up and continue in a bad relationship forever. I just think that in a lot of ways divorce is like war, you should only resort to it when the other side has rejected all attempts to achieve a peaceful solution.
Thanks, Louie. That sounds quite reasonable. I have actually asked her to see a marriage counselor with me several times over the years, but she rejects me every time. Thus I have seen counselors on my own. I will now start (again alone) the counseling service of the author of “The Sex-Starved Marriage”, hoping that their expertise on the subject might help us. If this doesn’t work, I’m about at the end of my rope.
I have an almost 3 yr old and an 11 month old. My sex drive increased big time AFTER having kids. Im still breastfeeding and I breastfed my firstborn too. I suffered postpartum depression after both babies as well. Honestly, I think our intimacy helped my PPD.
We had sex 1 week after my oldest was born and 2 weeks after my baby. I had c-sections too! I felt sorry for him and we felt like our love had blossomed with each birth and I guess that was our way of celebrating! I still feel like Im not satisfying him enough, Im sure he could do it multiple times every day. Then again, Im almost 30 and I think it will be my “wild” times soon! We are very creative and are willing to try anything once!
I think dads need to ask themselves whether its really sex that they want so badly or is it a love life. If all you are looking for is the physical release of sex then I would suggest that you consider how your demands for “body time” from your wife may end up hurting your love life down the road.
Prior to having kids my wife and I had a very healthy sex life which I totally took for granted.
After our baby I expected that both of us would want to get back to sex quickly, and I became more and more frustrated when it wasan’t happening. Eventually I started laying guilt trips on my wife about my “physical needs” and she relented to have sex, however, she was not really into it. To put it bluntly, she was giving me service sex in order to avoid damage in our marriage. In hind sight I can clearly see that service sex was bad for our relationship because it turned sex into a chore for her, and it didn’t really meet my needs either. I got my physical release, but it felt wrong to be using her body when her heart and mind were not really engaged in the activity. I can honstly say that I now know what the difference is between having sex and making love.
Guys, be patient and wait for the real thing. Wait for your wife to be ready for real love making instead of demanding service sex. If you are patient and supportive then when sex does return, it will be more fullfilling.
Yes it is a love life we want.
I thought that’s what she wanted too.
But it turns out that she just liked sex, and now she doesn’t.
Because when I ask her about it she says she isn’t interested in sex with anyone.
And that isn’t what I’m asking her, I’m asking her about our love life and what happened to her passion for me, not whether she would theoretically be interested in fucking anyone else.
If our sexual relationship to do with love then she doesn’t love me anymore.
So Tom, how long did you wait?
Ian
I started making demands for sex at about 5-6 months post partum. It was not until 11 months post partum that we finally tried something. That was after many fights, a few of which ended with her in tears.
After a few months of having sex every couple of weeks or so I started to realize that she was not getting into it the way I expected her to. I honestly thought that once we got rolling again she would remember that it was fun and then stop being so reluctant. However, by 15 months post partum I was still initiating all sex and she was still not showing much interest. After that I started to back off and stopped trying to force the issue. We are now almost 24 months post-partum. Sex is still rare, but when it does happen it is a much more positive experience that it used to be.
I have come to grips with the idea that we may never get back to having sex every couple days like we used to. Our world is different now. We are both tired all the time and there are not many oppurtunities to make love.
so what if it is the man with the loss of drive and not the woman?
It is possible for either partner in a relationship to lose their sex drive. This forum tends to focus on moms who want their libido back, or dads who want mom to get her libido back. However, I have seen articles elsewhere that discuss dads losing their sex drive as well. There are lots of possibilities:
1) You may be just exhausted. Having a baby in the house can wear everybody down, not just mom. In our house I am the lighter sleeper so if one of the kids is up in the night 70% of the time it is me who gets up. Some weeks I feel like a zombie at work and I definitely have no desire for noctural activities on those weeks.
2) You may be depressed. Post-partum depression is common for moms, but dads can get it to. Sometimes it is related to lack of sleep. Sometimes its caused by the sudden changes in your life (especially for first time parents). Depression usually effects all aspects of your life. If you are finding that you have also lost the desire to persure other things that you used to enjoy (hobbies etc) then maybe you should talk to your doctor about depression.
3) Sometimes dads have trouble dealing with the physical changes that their wife has gone through. After birth many moms have to really fight to get the baby weight back off. If you are finding your wife less physically attractive than she used to be then you have to be patient (the weight will come off) and also come to grips with the fact that some changes may be permanent. My wife’s breasts are considerably smaller and droopier than they were before kids. It bothered me at first, but I got over it. I don’t look as good as I did 5 years ago either.
4) You may also find that your wife is generally less affectionate and less concerned with your emotional needs than she used to be. This can cause new dads to feel like they have been shoved aside and they get resentful. Honestly, if this is the case then you just need to suck it up and wait it out. Babies need a lot of love and attention through their first 2-3 years. Eventually your wife will have time for you. You can help by off loading some of her baby duties. Personally, I was jealous of our first child during the breast feeding months. I know it was petty and childish, but I felt like my wife’s breasts were like a favourite toy that had been taken away.
5) You may also be secretly afraid of getting your wife pregnant again. This is a common reason for new moms to avoid sex, but it can happen to dads too. If you are finding that being a dad is stressful then it would not be surprising for you to subconciosuly be avoiding the possibility of going through it again.
Maybe none of these things describe your situation. You may need to talk to your doctor. Men are notorious for not wanting to talk about stuff like this. If it is affecting your happiness then you should face it down.
I thought of something else after I posted my earlier reply. Sometimes couple find it really awkward to go back to having sex again after having a baby. The longer you have been away from it, the more awkward it becomes. Its almost like you have to learn how to do lovemaking all over again.
In the early days of our marriage my wife and I fell into certain routines that we would go through when having sex. For instance, it was very easy for me to get her warmed up for sex because her nipples were very sensitive. I could almost give her an orgasm just by playing with her nipples.
After breast feeding kid #1 for 10 months her nipples became much less sensitive. I can remember one embrassing episode where after 15 minutes of me trying everything I could think of to excite her nipples she finally said “look, this isn’t going anywhere. You need to do something else.” It was a very awkward moment and definitely killed my sex drive for the day.
The only advice I can give on this subject is to be patient and communicate with your wife. If the old tricks don’t work anymore than you need to be creative and learn new ways to do foreplay. Think of it like cooking. Learning to cook new dishes is not easy. I usually get them wrong the first time. Sometimes I decide that a particular dish wasan’t as good as I thought it would be and never make it again. However, sometimes I stumble onto something really good that becomes a regular part of our meal rotation.
any advice from anyone please!!!, im 26 year old woman, n i gave birth to my first baby, after a four year try and losing 6 through, my first baby is my lucky 7th. Iv found it hard with my partner to explain how im feeling drawn away from sex over the 4 years, it has been like every time iv lost a baby, apart of me has gone with each one. anyways to get to the point my baby is 16 weeks old now and me and my partner have had sex once since i fell pregnant, iv lost all self esteem, im still getting used to my new body shape n bits, n im feeling really under pressure to have sex with my partner . . to the point were if we have a cuddle n that i feel its going to turn to full on sex so i make an excuse to stop the situation then i feel bad for my partner but he just doesnt understand, i just dont have the feelings that he does . . at the minute . . . for sex . . anyone else been in my shoes . . if so what did you do . . or any comments would be helpful . . please be sensitive
Many thanks for this forum. Lot’s of great insights and information here.
Advice needed though:
My wife and I are in our 30s and have three kids – ages 5, 3, and 1. We both work flexible schedules and share the responsibility of taking care of the kids (no daycare). We’ve been married for 7 years now, and had been dating four years before then. The frequency of our sexual intimacy has been an issue on and off for most of this time. We eventually went to counseling, whereupon our communication improved dramatically and thus our sex life. However, eventually, it waned again…. then more counseling…. then a bit of an improvement…. then waned again.
I realize that we both work, have three young kids, and live in a society where gender roles are being redefined in many areas. However, I am absolutely tired of being the initiator 99% of the time. I feel as if the ball is entirely in her court, and she gets to call all the shots. In short, she is in total control of our sex life. Furthermore, she rarely will stop moving long enough to actually look me in the eye, or give me a meaningful hug or kiss. She is “too busy”. I do chores, take care of sick children, let her sleep in most mornings, I cook all of the meals…. and feel like a tool – an blunt object that is to be used to get a job done with little regard for basic maintenance let alone nurturing. I don’t know what to do, but I feel horribly trapped, unloved, and neglected.
Help.
Familyman
I feel your pain. I am also in a relationship where I initiate 99% percent of all intimacy in our relationship. However, I am past the point of being upset about it now. Over time I have come to understand that my wife really and truly is exhausted all the time. We have two small kids who are very intelligent, and also very active. My wife is a stay at home mom and she is completely wiped by the end of a typical working day. Weekends are not much better because thats when we tend to do most of our errands (shopping etc) and socializing. So, point #1 is that life with small kids is exhausting.
Point #2 is that you can’t overcome that kind of fatigue with small periods of respite. By Friday evening my wife is typically so tired that she passes out shortly after the kids are in bed. Even if I let her sleep in Saturday morning she will still be stiff, sore and tired when she wakes up. I have come to understand that she needs the weekends to recover from the week of being a stay at home mom the same way that people who do physical labor need the weekend to recover. So I have also come to accept that even if I let her sleep in and do all the chores and make supper and put the kids to bed, this may do nothing to increase my chances of getting sex. If I was expecting sex as my reward and it didn’t happen, then thats too bad. She is not obligated to reward me for doing nice things for her.
Point #3 is that the situation described above is a phase of life that will evntually pass. This fall Kid #1 will start school. Hopefully Kid #2 will still be taking naps so that my wife can look forward to having some respite every day for at least 2 hours. Over time both kids will become less and less demanding and then my wife will start having some energy left over to get our love life back on track.
I suppose that I could guilt my wife into jump starting our sex life earlier, but I have chossen to not do that. That would just add to her woes and not really do anything to eliviate mine. Will it really make me happy to have sex with my wife if I know she is only doing it for my sake? Instead I have decided to accept that my wife is as much a victim in this scenario as I am. She dosen’t want to be exhausted, and she dosen’t want me to be unhappy, but the exhaustion is a fact and I have to live with the related fact that we will not have a real sex life until the small kids phase is over.
In the meantime, I have also accepted that the little things that she does do, like spontateous hugs and kisses or surprising me with my favourite meal, are as much an expression of love as sex is. Its like the lyrics in that Bachman Turner Over Drive song …
Any loving is good loving. So I’ll take what I can get.
By the way, I recognize that you are not currently getting the spontaneous hugs. That was something that I had to get going again in our relationship. Early in the small kids phase we argued about sex a lot and the unintended effect of this was my wife started to shy away from any form of affection that I might misinterpret as an invitation for sex. I started giving her spontaneous hugs and kisses without trying to persue things any further and eventually she stopped fretting about what my intentions were and started being affectionate as well. I had to rebuild the trust.
I recently read a book that put a whole new spin on why I have been so unsuccessful in re-igniting a sex life with my wife. The book was called “How to improve your marriage without talking about it”. At first I was certain that this book was going to be about how to manipulate your partner without their knowing, but that was not the point at all. Instead the book focused on the different ways that men and women deal with stress and why marriage issues rarely ever get resolved through talk. I will not recount the entire book, but I would like to point out the big things that I learned.
When I confront my wife about our sex life my intent is to make her aware that I am unhappy so that we can work together to find a solution. My logic is that if she loved me, and she knew that I was unhappy, then she would make changes in order to try and make me happy. However, according to the book, this logic is flawed for the following reasons. A woman’s sexual desire for a man is largely dependant on how connected she feels to him. If she feels that there is a strong connection then it will increase her desire to have sex with him. If she feels that the connection is weak then it will decrease her desire to have sex with him.
In the beginning of a realtionship things are different because the two people are infatuated with each other and their brains are releasing chemicals that override some of their natural defence mechanisms that might otherwise prevent a relationship from forming. In a sense it causes you to have a rosey view of the other person and feel a strong connection, even if its not really there yet. This makes females more sexually attracted to men that they are infatuated with and therefore more likely to want sex with a man early in a romance (or want to have sex with atrractive celebrities etc).
Of course, infatuation always wears off eventually, and after that a couple needs to work to keep the connection strong. Having kids can often cause strain on the connection between a husband and wife (as can many other things). Here is where the problem comes in for us new dads. If we try to pressure our wives into having sex with us by confronting them or otherwise showing that we are unhappy, then our wives will feel that the security of the marriage (and therefore of the family) is threatened and their sense of connection with us will be reduced. The more you fight about sex (or anything else) the weaker the connection becomes. Even if your wife gives into the demands and starts having sex again, she is doing so out of fear of losing her husband and in the background she still feels that the connection is weak and therefore does not actually want to have sex with you.
It is easy to understand why this is the case. The biological purpose of sex is to reproduce. Reproduction requires much more investment for the female (carrying, delivering and nursing the baby) and thus females will not want to go through this process with a man that they feel is not strongly connected for fear that he will abandon them later.
So to get to the point guys, if you want to persue a better sex life you can’t do it by directly confronting your wife or trying to guilt her into it. Doing so will just weaken her sense of connection with you and push you further from the goal. You have to go about it indirectly by doing things that strengthen her sense of connection with you. You have to do things that make her feel safe and secure in the relationship. If you want to know more about it, read the book.
As a side note for moms, the book also has advice for women about how to increase their sense of connection with their husbands. Men are very sensitive to shame. This is why they get very defensive when they are criticised and why they get upset when their attempts at initiating sex are repeatedly refused. Anything that causes a man to feel like he is not being an adequate husband, lover, provider or whatever will cause him to feel shame and his natural way to deal with shame will be to either attack or flee from whatever is causing the shame. This is why some dads withdraw emotionally from their wives after kids are born or suddenly become argumentative when they never were before. If you want to prevent that from happening then sometimes you have to make an effort to boost your husband’s ego and make him feel that he is still important to you … like having sex with him.
Its a very good book. I reccomend it to anyone that is having relationship issues of any kind (even if they are not kid related). It has a lot of good info on why couples fight and why the fighting rarely accomplishes anything.
Want vs. Need: if I needed sex, my hand would suffice. What we need is intimacy. We are social creatures. Sex would be nice, but what I need is a hug.