I've been married for 10 years and I have two kids. I just got home from a six day business trip and my family is not home this weekend and came to a very startling realization - I really don't like being around my wife. I feel like a complete failure when it comes to my marriage and I feel guilty for not wanting to be around my wife.

When I'm with my wife I don't feel relaxed. I'm always on guard to make sure I don't upset her and I do everything possible to avoid her looks of disapproval, frustration and her criticisms.

I love my job, because when I work with my co-workers, they make me feel good about myself and the work I do.

My wife and I recently read both Tim Keller and Gary Chapman's books on marriage. We both come from families with solid marriages. I understand my wife's love language and mine. Sometimes I feel like we just are a bad match.

We are in a vicious cycle because my wife's primary love language is quality time. We are always together because I work from home and she is a stay at home mom. But I struggle to spend quality time with her because I don't want to be around her and I usually just get depressed when I'm with her.

One of my primary love languages is physical touch. Actually I have a blend of 1) words of affirmation regarding sexual acts 2) Physical touch to express attraction to me and 3) a weird dialect of words of affirmation in the sense that I struggle with her getting frustrated with my behavior (meaning she doesn't have to use words of affirmation, but avoid disrespectful tones, sarcasm, criticism, etc.).

Being desired sexually by my partner is very important to me. My wife is really resistant to my advances.

It is heart breaking and frustrating to me because although I don't care for my wife's personality, I still find her to be as attractive as the day we met. Sometimes and I just look at her and I'm overcome by how beautiful she is. I have to stop myself from touching her because I know it annoys her when I touch her.

During good times, I get the obligatory sex once a month. But sometimes she will refuse my advances for months at a time. We've had sex twice in the last 7 months, but she has been pregnant most of those in her defense (she likes a flat stomach - not a big deal to me, in fact, she looked better than ever her first trimester).

During our first year of marriage I got so frustrated by her refusing me that I stopped pursuing her sexually, having grown tired of the rejection. We went 7 and 1/2 months without sex. Finally, I made the move one night and she allowed me for 5 mins. It seemed like it was an inconvenience for her. The rejection took its toll and I was embarrassed of my sex drive (like I was some type of animal).

The strange thing about those 7 months is we made dinner together and spent the evening together almost every night. We ran every errand together. We were always together. We would kiss and I would hold her, but she would roll her eyes or sigh in that annoyed tone if I tried to take it to the next step.

***EDIT*** If for some reason, intercourse doesn't bring her pleasure, she'll ask if I'm going to finish soon about 4 minutes into the act. It's humiliating.

She always talks during sex about how she doesn't have time for this or she talks about other thing during sex***EDIT***(All the meanwhile I'm commenting on how attractive she is).

***EDIT*** Usually after those moments I feel close to her for the rest of the day until her back-handed comments and frustration with me wears me down once we resume the daily grind of family and household management.

I do carry resentment toward my wife. I've tried to get past it. I feel like I was tricked when it comes to sex. I told her it was important before marriage. I had unrealistic expectations of sex being the last thing you do before going to sleep and the first thing you do to wake-up in the morning.

What led me to this expectation is we tried to not have sex before marriage, but failed early in our relationship. ***EDIT*** We had also just started a long distance relationship since I graduated from the college we me at.***EDIT***
But these indicators led me to the conclusion that we were a good marriage match when it came to her attraction level to me and her sense of adventure in the bedroom, which was important criteria.

She struggled with guilt due to our sex before marriage. I felt bad because she would cry sometimes and couldn't believe that she lost her virginity - but she loved me too much to leave me. Three months before we got married she said we needed to stop so our wedding night would be somewhat special. She never regained that level of sexual attraction to me from that point on. Could the guilt be impacting our sex life 12 years after the fact?

I feel terrible about the overall situation regarding our marriage because my wife loves me and she wants me to be around all the time. She always wants to talk to me.

I feel like I can only talk to her for so long before I feel hurt by her and I just want to get away from her. By Saturday morning, I'm counting down the hours until Monday AM when I can return to my home office and escape my wife. I think she is just very direct and I'm sensitive. Not a good mix.

I know one of the reasons why dating was great for us and marriage is not is we didn't work together when we were not married and we only saw each other on weekends for 3 years of our dating relationship.

If we have to work together or live in the same place, it is just bad. She gets very frustrated with me. I don't do things the right way.

She is a wonderful mom and I'm completely physically attracted to her.

But I feel guilty because really I only want to be around her if she'll express physical desire for me and if she restrains her frustration toward me.

We did go through 9 marriage counseling sessions three years ago. They didn't go well. She disagreed with the marriage counselor's advice. We recently did Gary Chapman's book. Our group leader asked us to write 5 things we want our spouse to do. She thought one of my five things were sweet, but dismissed the other bedroom related ones.

I fantasize about those pre-marriage days with my wife. But what is really terrifying is sometimes I think about how other women out there might find me sexually attractive and fulfilling. Then thoughts of justifying a mistress of sorts is perfectly reasonable since my wife isn't interested in having sex with me.

I pray that I never will act on it. It would crush my wife even though she has no desire for me and it is against my believes.

Help!

Thanks for reading this. Any suggestions and tips?

This business trip outcome really has me concerned about my feelings. Also, I feel guilty because this is a self serving outlook on marriage. I know that I'm called to love and serve my wife. But I'm acting like it is a hopeless marriage because my wife doesn't desire me sexually and I have thin skin when it comes to her remarks.

Hi Hopeless, welcome to Marriage Builders. Did you come here to get advice about Marriage Builders or did you come here to blog about Love Languages? Marriage Builders is a completely different program in that it has a PLAN to restore the love in your marriage. When Gary Chapman copied certain aspects of Marriage Builders, he didn't copy its plan to transform the marriage. If you want help with Marriage Builders we can help you with that, but if you want to utilize love languages, you are in the wrong place.

There are many reasons your marriage is not working and the first is that you spend the nights apart. That creates an emotional detachment and a lifestyle of independent behavior. So when you come home, you are the outsider and an irritant to her independent lifestyle. You can't sustain the romantic love in your marriage that way. It takes 20 hours of undivided attention per week to CREATE romantic love and 15 hours to SUSTAIN. You can't do that if you don't have integrated lifestyles.

The above paragraph explains why she has a sexual aversion to you. It is because you asked her to engage in sex acts "begrudgingly." Would you want to do something that you didn't LIKE to do? Well, that is what happened here. She just stopped doing it. Women need 2 things to desire sex: an emotional attachment and the prospect of enjoyment. She has never had the latter with you, and probably doesn't have the former anymore.

As a woman reading your sexual behavior, I know I would run the other way. It is not appealing in the least.

And lastly, we can transform your marriage if you will follow a plan. If you want to follow lurve languages, we can't help you there.

Please keep your posts free of graphic sexual detail.

Which she should do. A spouse should meet her spouses needs in a way that makes her happy. Otherwise, they develop sexual aversions, as you can see. Making sacrifices is a disaster for marriage, so if you want your wife to meet your needs, you should MAKE SURE she is doing it in a way she enjoys. Otherwise, she will stop doing it. As you can see...

Hi MelodyLane,

Thanks for reading and responding. Is it possible you misunderstood my post?

My wife and I live a completely integrated life. She is a stay at home mom and I work from home. She often works at the computer right beside me during my 9-5 work day. What inspired me to write this post was due to the fact that this is the first 6 consecutive days I've spent away from my wife in our ten years of marriage. And I've never felt so relaxed in 10 years. It is the first 6 days I feel like I've been able to let me guard down.

We live such integrated lives, that typically I couldn't get on a forum like this without her finding out.

Although sometimes I feel like an outsider in my own home, it isn't because I'm spending time outside the home. I'm ALWAYS home. Sometimes I go Monday through Friday without leaving the house.

Also, I don't "begrudgingly" ask her to have sex with me. It is her response to my request that is begrudging if she agrees to. I sense an attitude from my wife of "make it quick" and "I'm only doing this for you and because its been a while and I need to do it as a spousal obligation."

When I ask or suggest we have sex, I do so meekly. In the past, I used to build a case by pointing out that I haven't pressured her at all for two or three months and its been that long since we last did so. But several years ago I realized that actually backfires on me because she gets defensive to that approach because it highlights that we haven't had sex for months and implies she's done something wrong.

My wife doesn't like to talk about sex. I've asked her to do things they way she likes, but it seems to embarrass her and she shuts down completely and won't have sex at all. If I reminder her of what she liked before we got married, she gets upset with me because I'm implying she enjoyed pre-marital sex.

I'm actually not familiar with Marriage Builders and I don't advocate any specific system. I just wandered on the forum to ask for help.

Does my post make more sense now that I've clarified these two items?

I do agree making sacrifices can be disastrous for a marriage. At one point I thought I could suppress any desires and let sex be an annual or bi-annual event. But it has simply caused me to feel disconnected emotionally from my wife and I resent her for the low frequency levels.

And I don't really enjoy sex at all if she doesn't want it or like it. That's frustrating for both of us because after that happens, she feels like I should be happy, but she can tell I'm not satisfied because she didn't enjoy it at all.

If you re-read my post, does this change your feedback?

Thanks,

You should take time to read Dr. Harley's basic concepts. Then decide if you want to follow the program.

We can help but you have to be ready to do things differently.

Hopeless, thanks for the clarification on the travel. That is reassuring, because that is a disaster to marriage.


What I meant is that you asked her do things and SHE might do them "begrudgingly."
This is what I was referring to and worded it poorly. Hopefully you read my post because you did not respond to my comments about sexual aversion. Please read them and comment.

As far as being "integrated" because you are home all the time, how many dates a month do you get?

Also, can you please condense your posts? It is very hard to follow your story because they are so overly long.

You are asking your wife to sacrifice. That's what we were talking about.

This is quite enough to cause a sexual aversion but I suspect there is more to the story.

I would also check out this article: The question of the ages: How can a...age?

By Willard F. Harley, Jr., Ph.D.

Another one that applies: How to Overcome Sexual Aversion

Hi MelodyLane,

I do fully realize asking my wife to have sex with me is asking her to sacrifice, considering it is something she does not want to do. And when I request or attempt specific acts, it further causes sexual aversion.

I just read through Dr. Harley's concepts. The conflict that I'm causing in our marriage is when the "taker" in me is in control regarding sex. Once we go about a month without sex, I feel like she owes it to me. When she refuses and we go another month, the "taker" in me comes back again and asks "how about now? It has been two months."

Then when we hit three months+ without sex, I start to get resentful and then move into "The State of Withdrawal." Then I find myself on the internet reading about how to cope in a sexless marriage and trying to suppress my desire for my wife.

Earlier in our marriage, I was utterly confused by my wife's change in desire for me. I was perplexed by her intense chemistry for me prior to marriage and why it was nowhere to be found on our wedding night.

I've come to realize that we do change. I'm not the man my wife met 13+ years ago. She's not the woman I met 13+ years ago. Perhaps her hormone levels were causing increased libido when we met.

I am convinced there was a sexual dysfunctional element of our first year of marriage. I don't think it is typical for newlyweds to go over seven months without having sex during their first year of marriage. She experienced pain our first few times having sex after marriage and that caused her to avoid it at all costs.

We've never recovered from that completely. I carry resentment and she will not allow sex to return to pre-marital frequency levels.

I do take much ownership for the state of our marriage now.

My wife is fairly happy with our marriage. It is me that is dissatisfied. I devastated her about 3 years ago when I first told her I was unhappy in our marriage. She had no clue I had been struggling for the first seven years of our marriage. I didn't want to hurt her by telling her this.

She knew I was unhappy with our sex life, but she didn't realize it was devastating our marriage.

My wife's top category is "conversation." I was giving her LOTS of conversation our first year or two of marriage.

But eventually my "love bank" was completely empty due to two reasons 1) her admiration for me disappeared during our engagement period 2) her sexual desire for me was non-existent.

I kept the conversation rolling, meanwhile running on love bank fumes for about two years and eventually I checked out.

The other complex dynamic to our relationship is when "conversations" happen, I'm making deposit into the love tank, but at the same time, my wife is usually making withdraws from my love bank during those "conversations."

I'll be the first to admit I'm overly sensitive, but her tone, comments and body language screams "I don't admire you."

Dr. Harvey talked about this in the "his needs" segment.

Now she is fine during these conversations. She likes talking to me. I don't, because for me, it's just another conversation with what Dr. Harvey refers to as the "disrespectful judge."

Absolutely. But we can help you turn this around. First off, you have to accept how critical it is for her to enjoy it. To understand this dynamic, it is important to understand that women need 2 things to desire sex: an emotional attachment to the partner and the prospect of enjoyment.

Which leads me to my question: how many dates do you go on in a month? What do you do?

MelodyLane,

Thank you very much for sharing the sexual aversion article.

It aligns to a theory I developed regarding our sex life several years ago. I just didn't call it sexual aversion.

Again, three months prior to marriage, my wife often initiated sex and had a strong desire for it. We stop in preparation for our wedding night to make it as special as possible considering we didn't wait for marriage.

Our wedding night, she experienced pain. I don't believe she had developed an aversion at this point. Our second night of our honeymoon sex was painful again. The third and forth night of our honeymoon, my wife refused to have sex with me. I pressured her to have sex with me before our honeymoon was over and then again when we returned home.

I'm convinced that us stopping sex three months before marriage, and then the pain of our first three or four encounters after marriage is what caused the aversion.

By our second week of marriage, we were already in the cycle of dinner for two, walks and then making out on the sofa, but her rejecting any advances if I tried to take it to the next step. Eventually I would ask what's wrong and she didn't want to talk about it. We entered the phase of or marriage were sex happened anywhere from once a month to once ever 7 months. She often told me it would never be enough for me, so why should she even try.

Another thing happened. I found out my new bride had a temper I didn't see while dating. The first time she dressed me down in a fit of rage, I was terrified. I never saw my parents yell at on another like that. I pleaded with her that I didn't want this in our marriage. Once I acted like I was angry and yelled back at her to see if it would help. She almost got physical with me when I yelled back. That was the last time I tried that tactic.

At some point around the end of our first year of marriage, I had officially left the "state of intimacy." But I think she was still in it with me. She just had a hot temper and the sexual aversion, but we still did everything together from the moment we got off work. Never did we go "do our own thing."

Our first year of marriage was the hardest. We've gotten much better since then. Her temper isn't as bad as it was then either.

Sorry for the long post again.

We only go out on a date once a month. We always go to one of her favorite restaurants.

I realize this is a problem. I love my work and I'll admit I use it as an escape from my wife. But it also is very demanding as well.

Prospect of enjoyment is what put us on this downward spiral, but once my love bank was empty, I probably greatly reduced my deposits that resulted in lesser emotional attachment to me.

This is a hard thing to turn around for the following reasons:

1. I'm sensitive
2. She needs conversation, but I can only take so much conversation because they typically lead to talks about something I did wrong or something she doesn't want me to do again.
3. She always has a plan and goals. If something disrupts her plan, I typically want to run away and hide because it is not fun to be around her.
4. I'm not sure if she would take the time to do the overcoming sexual aversion activities. She has little patience for anything in life. And she has no interest in adding sex back into our marriage.

Really the only starting point I think I can have is setup more dates. If I get her out of the house, then she's less likely to be focused on managing the house and the kids and I disrupting her plans, which causes her to make withdraws from my love bank.

On a side note, something jumped out at me on the sexual aversion article. Dr. Harley writes: "...even a climax is also unpleasant."

My wife is usually not enjoying sex until she reaches this phase that seems like right before climax. She admits she enjoys sex in that "in-between" phase.