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, why’s she so tired and doesn’t want to bang me? I’m so confused! And now I’m resentful, but I hide it so well! And now I’m angry and she’s so dumb she can’t 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 doesn’t bounce back by a year or so it’s 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 didn’t 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 “monogamous” and permanently emotionally and financially linked relationship.
There are very legit and understandable reasons why this can happen, such as getting on SSRI’s 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 isn’t 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) don’t 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 it’s 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, it’s 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 “my wife changed and no longer blah blah”. How many of these guys also changed and no longer show any romance or non sexual affection until they roll over and think “hey wanna play around”? 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. That’s just a convenient narrative
> In two longitudinal studies (one spanning one year and one spanning four years), the researchers found that, on average, women’s levels of sexual desire were not only lower than men’s at the beginning of their marriages, but much more variable than men’s. Men’s levels of sexual desire stayed higher and more constant than women’s throughout the duration of both studies.
>Furthermore, declines in women’s sexual desire predicted declining marital satisfaction for both members of the couple. Interestingly, although women’s sexual desire declined over time, couples’ 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 possibility—that 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, wives’ sexual desire declined even more steeply, yet men’s 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 women’s sexual desire and couples’ marital satisfaction.
> The authors suggest that women’s 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?
I’ve observed this for myself, it’s 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 😅
Honestly I don’t 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.
And them just demanding sex. "Yes you take care of three kids, the dogs and the chores, but I want sex. I even waited until the kids are asleep. Now gimme!". then they are surprised this doesn't get the wife in the mood. They also tend to be selfish in bed, resulting in the sex being pleasureless for the wife.
Why just why would their libido go down? It's a mystery
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u/trapped_in_a_box 24d ago
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.