Dear Dr. Pinhas,
I am hoping you could provide some insight/help for a long standing problem I’ve had with my wife. First, by way of some background: I am a 35 year old healthy, professional male. My wife is a 36 year old healthy, professional female. We live on Long Island and both make a nice living. We have both kept ourselves in good physical shape and would be considered attractive to the opposite sex. We have been married for almost 9 years and we have three children – ages 7, 5 and 18 months. We dated for three years before we married, but she maintained her virginity prior to marriage. I was sexually experienced before we met, but respected her wishes in regards to waiting until marriage, as I knew I loved her and felt it was worth the wait. Both of us come from traditional Catholic backgrounds. She knew I had been sexually active before we met, and she always assured me that she would open up more sexually once we were married.
I knew going into our marriage that I was the more sexually experienced partner. I knew that there was going to be an adjustment period. My wife always seemed to be appreciative that I did not pressure her to have sex before marriage, and would engage in “everything, but” prior to our being married, but truth be told, her lack of experience was often evident and I would go home more than a bit frustrated. However, even when she would engage in this limited sexual contact, there was always a hesitancy that I never understood. For example, I would ask that she dress in lingerie or engage in “dirty talk” when she would use her hand on me, and she would react negatively. Again, she would always explain it away by saying that things would get better once we were married, and once she was free of the awkwardness of being under her parents’ roof (we both lived at home until we were married).
When we got married the sexual hesitancy on her part continued, and actually got worse. She would openly complain when I asked her to wear lingerie, and would actually get angry when I would buy it for her. She would complain about performing fellatio – and has now cut it out completely, claiming problems with her jaw. She was averse to my introduction of adult videos and toys into the bedroom. Before we were married, I had steadily gotten her to become receptive to cunnilingus (or so I thought), but then she decided she no longer enjoyed it after the birth of our first child, saying it doesn’t do anything for her and never really did.
After the birth of each of our children (she had normal vaginal births for all three), she basically withdrew from sexual intercourse for nearly 8 months. Please don’t get me wrong, I am understanding of the medical issues that effect women after childbirth, and I never expected an immediate return to sexual intimacy, but I got the feeling that she was taking advantage of the situation to get out of sex for as long as she could.
At this point, sex has pretty much become a chore that she openly seeks to avoid. Usually, I am rebuffed in my requests and when she does submit to it, it is with a blatant “Hurry up and get it over with so I can get to sleep” attitude. She cites an exhaustive work/child care schedule as her primary reason for this – which I do recognize to be somewhat legitimate, but at the same time, I also believe it has become a convenient excuse. It is not unusual for her to go weeks at a time without doing anything with me, and when I complain, she just shrugs and gives excuses (usually centering around our children) as to how it was impossible to make the time.
I am really in a terrible place emotionally. I love my wife. On many levels, we are perfectly compatible. The only thing we routinely fight about is sex. We get along very well and see eye-to-eye on almost everything else. She has pretty much told me that she just doesn’t getting anything out of sex and just doesn’t like it (a HUGE hit to my male ego), but is not interested in doing anything to fix it. She refuses to talk to me or make any kind of sounds during sex – even faking, which at this point I would gladly take! She will not role play or engage in any “dirty talk”. She wears lingerie grudgingly and complains about it the whole time. I find myself wanting the sex to satisfy the physical urges I have as a man, but then resenting her for making me suffer for it. I come away with an empty feeling inside because I feel like it is all one-sided – it’s just me getting off and her bending over (she never wants to change positions) and being angry the whole time.
I love my wife. I am committed to my marriage and my children. I don’t want to have an affair, but I would be lying if I didn’t say that the thought crosses my mind often. I don’t want to go through the rest of my life in a passionless marriage, but I have moral, religious and economic aversions to the concept of divorce. I feel like I was lied to and lulled into a marriage under false representations, and now I am trapped. What can I do?
Fred
Long Island, New York
Response from Dr. Pinhas
Fred, You posit a very heartfelt dilemma that I have heard and treated over and over again, that is the disparity in sexual desire and appetite. How sad that you have common values, interests and ways of looking at the world yet the sexual piece cannot get worked between the two of you. I wish I could tell you that your wife’s issue was menopause related which happens for many couples who have had vibrant and well timed sex lives at an earlier stage in their marriage….. only to be undermined by a woman’s hormonal shifts which may render her DEAD from the neck down. Many women see this coming and work assiduously at their vaginal physical therapy and hormonal replacement to prevent a backslide at this stage in their lives….. But alas, this is not the case with your wife. At the age of 36 , one should be at the top of one’s sexual game, not the bottom of it. Three kids and a professional life doesn’t help with desire, which you are aware of, but you are onto the fact that your wife uses this as a major resistance to her desire. Many women cannot get their pilot light lit.
Clearly, being a traditional Catholic may factor into the lack of desire equation for her… but this would be hypothesis and conjecture on my part since I do not know your wife. Many a religious Catholic women, I have treated, present with varying levels and types of sexual dysfunction, and, although they all may present with different sexual symptoms… one thing is indelibly clear….. they want to change their situation. One of my patients said with humor ” If I have to become a recovering Catholic to claim my desire and arousal, just show me the way..” At least she was on board… This is critical.
Your wife does not want to be on board sexually, which is the sad part, since you love her, which is the painful and hard part. From what you convey, I experience a STRUGGLE between the two of you…. You are pushing for your version of sexuality… lingerie , “dirty talk”and “whoopy” enthusiasm while she masturbates you while you just wish she could fake it a bit. ( That runs thin awfully fast.) You are quite desperate for the illusion of something meaningful. THIS MAY BE PART OF THE PROBLEM.
In your email to me you state three powerful pieces of information… that give me insight into your wife’s dilemma. The first is her lack of experience and hesitancy was evident from the beginning of your relationship. The second is her hesitancy about sexual matters you never understood ( lingerie and sex toys etc) and the third is that cunnilingus never did it for her before or after she gave birth.
Fred, stop and think about sexuality from her point of view. She was raised Catholic and I suspect not just in a cultural sense, but in an internalized sense, where the teachings of the Church were ingrained in her. She did not push this away but rather felt the need to abide by Roman Catholic teachings. It is hard to know her parent’s contribution to her sex restrictiveness. This certainly may play a large role in her discomfort of her body and fear of sexuality as a general disposition. One cannot say ” I DO” and all of a sudden be liberated from years of dogma and anxiety no matter how married and in love one is. I do not doubt that she loves you but for sure from the get go, you did not seem to understand that she was not ABLE TO BE ON THE SAME PAGE AS YOU. She needed you to teach her, instruct her, be sensitive to her guilt and shame, slowly open her up in a well- timed way. She needed not to be pushed into sexual intercourse or any goal-oriented behavior, for that matter. The poor woman must have been traumatized by your request that she “talk dirty” to you. Even comfortable sexually responsive women have anxiety about auditory utterances in the bedroom. She needed you to start slowly with sensual massage, caressing, and tenderness. It doesn’t not matter what she promised you….. the simple truth, from my perspective, is that she may have been completely uninitiated and uncomfortable, acting “AS IF” she was “present and accounted for” with you. This means putting herself through the sexual motions of how a woman is suppose to respond to sexual behavior with the words but without the music. I hope you get my drift. She has been disconnected sexually from her experience, out of fear and discomfort and you did not tune into where she was at, sexually. You tuned into where you were at sexually which at this point in your marriage is still where you are located.
Has your wife had an orgasm from her clitoris? Clearly she is not having an orgasm from sexual intercourse. You did not mention her orgasm history in your email. This is diagnostic because your elimination of her orgasm history is conspicuous by its absence. Is sexuality all about you?? If she has not had pleasure in sexuality what would be the motivation for continued and renewed sexual contact with you? Where would the payoff be for her? Presuming she has not “come”, one can understand why she is disinterested in sexuality with you. Does she masturbate? Does she own a vibrator that she purchased? When she is alone and not pressured does she feel a sense of sexual responsiveness inside of herself? Lots of unanswered questions here.
Her hesitancy is that you ask her to use toys and lingerie when none of it makes sense to her but rather that it meets your needs, not hers. The rule with women like your wife is SHE COMES FIRST. ( Not a bad rule in general for all men in relationships with women). Her experience (and your experience) of you is that YOUR NEEDS COME FIRST. She was probably so paranoid about cunnilingus anxieties, which is typical for many sexually inexperienced women, that she was just waiting it out until you tired yourself out or told you to stop. She probably could not relax enough to allow herself to enjoy pleasure. If you tongue wasn’t doing it for her it would be enormously difficult for her to tell you what she needed when she herself doesn’t know what she needs or how to respond sexually. It seems neither of you has had an opportunity to REALLY talk about feelings. She has stayed closed for fear of opening up doubts about her sexual functionality. You are poking around trying to find the key to her responsiveness in a desperate way which is not helping matters one bit. You are losing her sexually and she is trying to stay as far away from you as possible knowing for sure that you love her ( and will stay with her) and hoping if she keeps her eyes closed, the whole matter will just go away. The sad truth is both of you are sexually disenfranchised from yourselves and each other. You are headed for an affair, it seems.
You need to “out” the problem when the two of you are alone together without “LIFE” intervening. You need to have a serious heart to heart talk about your disappointment and despair and what your mutual sexual state of affairs must feel like to her. Ask her how she experiences you and what goes on between you. Ask her if she wants to start all over again without pressure and demands but mutual understanding and pleasure without goals for sexual performance. See my blog on sensate focus. At this point in time, this may be your only strategy for fixing your sexual life with her. I would advise both of you to engage in some form of couple psycho-dynamic sexual therapy.
Be Well
Dr. Pinhas,
Thank you for the insightful, and detailed, assessment of our situation. You forced me to face a lot of things that I had never considered before. It is very possible and highly likely that I forced issues, and raised expectations, in my marriage that my wife simply was not prepared or ready for, and may have made a challenging situation worse in the process. Before reading your take on things, I don’t think I ever looked at it that way. I was more concerned with having a “pity party” for myself.
And in terms of your questions re: my wife’s sexual pleasure, it is definitely something that I gave up on out of frustration (figuring that if she wasn’t willing to meet me half way, I might as well just make it about me and get whatever pleasure I could out of things), and that is not a healthy way to approach a sexual relationship.
I am committed to taking your advice and trying to make things better. I am going to have a heart to heart with my wife when I can delicately approach the subject, without it escalating into an argument, and propose that we “reboot” the sexual relationship – start from scratch and try to focus on what makes her comfortable first and foremost.
I don’t think she will agree to seeing a professional right away. Whenever I have suggested it in the past, she has tensed up and shot the idea down – but perhaps over time we can work towards that. I enjoy your blog, and I appreciate your help with this very difficult – and intensely personal – issue. Thank you again for your respect and discretion.
Fred
Dear Dr. Pinhas,
As typical of someone with excellent therapy skills, you have successfully pointed out to Fred that which he can change in order to hopefully achieve his desired results. After all, it is empowering to do just that, ie concentrate on that which we can change within ourselves as opposed to pointing out the deficiencies in others and expounding on how the other person can change. I like that you encouraged him to have a serious heart to heart discussion with his wife about his feelings related to this and to ask her feelings about it. As a therapist myself, I agree wholeheartedly with your advice for them to engage in some form of couples psychodynamic therapy.
In this case, however, there seems to be part of the equation which is missing. We have no idea where Fred’s wife is at.
I like your statement that a good rule of thumb for men is that, “she comes first”, but I don’t think that only regarding the sexual part. That goes for day to day activities as well. And if she’s thinking to herself that, “he comes first”, that’s the basis of a good relationship. What if one is thinking that, but the other is not. The foundation is cracking. As you mentioned, there are a lot of unanswered questions. Like, “Is she even interested in trying to develop a fulfilling sexual relationship with Fred?” She certainly claimed to be before they were married, when she was trying to get him to marry her.
Dr Pinhas, I’m not so quick to assume her lack of interest is due to her Catholic upbringing. There’s nothing Fred wrote there that convinces me she’s not lesbian. And in any case, she certainly lied to him before they got married, and he has every right to be angry about it. I’m not saying it will be fruitful to bring out his anger, but it’s all not fruitful to deny that he has a basis for that. I want to tell Fred that it’s ok to be angry. He needs to enter into a relationship with his anger.
I’m not really reading from Fred that it’s only the sex that he misses. It sounds to me that he misses the intimacy. I like your suggestion that they need to start slowly with sensual massage, caressing and tenderness. Maybe she could become interested from this perspective. After all, she loves him. She cares about him. They love and care about each other. They don’t touch each other or explore. He wants to feel wanted and she wants to be left alone because any exploration might lead to sex which she does not want. Even if she’s lesbian, if she loves him, she should be able to massage him lovingly, and she should be able to receive his loving touch. From there worlds could potentially open, and they may benefit a lot from feeling each other’s loving intimate touch, even if it doesn’t lead directly to sex.
You raised some great questions, like does she masturbate or have a sense of sexual responsiveness inside herself? If she has never had an orgasm, this would shed light on her lack of interest.
We live on hope, and that’s usually considered a good thing. I would recommend to Fred that he push the issue to find out whether or not there’s a basis for hope here, or is it more a delusion. I often tell my patients, “It’s like you’re in a hole and you’re trying to dig yourself out. I’m here to support you, but you have to do the digging.” The question here is, “Is Fred’s wife willing to do the digging along with Fred?”
It’s interesting that Fred has strong moral beliefs against divorce but apparently less so about cheating. I would suggest that having an affair behind his wife’s back is one which likely would lower Fred’s self esteem even further and would create a lot of confusion. I’m not suggesting divorce either. But if after all the searching, you find there’s really nothing else to be done because she’s just not interested, are prepared to deal with that? You can just accept it because you love her so deeply. Maybe through patience and love, eventually she’ll come around. Maybe she’s not ready to do the digging now but will be later. So many questions.
Good luck.
Gary
I once read a story that changed my thinking. As a husband and wife were sitting at a table after many years of ups and downs but a very good marriage together, he asked if there was anything she would change about him, if she could. She offered a few things like his snoring or his going into the office on Sundays while she and the kids were in church without him. She then asked him the same question. Without a moment’s hesitation he said that he wouldn’t change a single thing about her, because, if he did, she wouldn’t be the woman he had fallen in love with, raised children with, and spent the best part of his life with.
Things can always be better, and you can work together to make them better. If this is just part of who she is, you may just have to love her for it, not in spite of it. There’s a Mexican proverb: si quieres el perro, acepta las pulgas (if you love the dog, accept the fleas).