It has now been 3 1/2 years since my husband was caught being unfaithful. We have been trying very hard to put our marriage back together. We have read "His Needs, Her Needs" and received counseling from our Pastor on several occasions in the last 3 1/2 years. He has cut off all contact with the people he had affairs with. His reason for the affair was that he wanted the attention that I wasn't giving him. I have forgiven him, but our mismatched sex drives threaten our marriage all the time. Sex and affection are his top 2 needs and I don't know how to meet them when he is not physically in my presence.

Most of the time, things are pretty good between us. We are a farm family and his job is very busy on average and extremely busy seasonally. In busy times, we talk about 15 minutes a day and see each other (when awake) for a maximum of an hour. Throughout our marriage he has felt rejected by me. Our sex drives couldn't be farther apart in terms of desire. He is always ready and willing. He wants to connect with me through sex. I want to connect with him through time together before I am ready for sex. He wants sex first thing in the morning (5:45 am). I am not awake or interested in sex at that time. Sex at night often doesn't happen because he is exhausted from work. Middle of the day is great if we can steal some time but doesn't happen very often. Sometimes I do try to meet he need in the morning, but it is usually unfulfilling to him because he can tell I'm not into it and it's awful for me because I feel used. It certainly doesn't bring me closer to him.

This morning he woke me up to "snuggle". He asked me what I needed. I told him I needed more time with him. He then told me he needed to have sex. I tried. I was having trouble getting aroused or even interested in sex. I asked if I could help satisfy his need any other way, but sex was it. We got into a disagreement when I told him I just couldn't do it. He told me he felt rejected AGAIN! I could tell he was angry and fed up with me for my lack of interest/desire for him. He told me I seemed more like a roommate than a wife. For the past 2 weeks, he has worked 7am to 9:30pm or later. It's difficult to speak to him while he is working so we don't talk much. I prepare his food, care for our children, help him with farm work and do his laundry. I sit with him while he eats dinner late at night so he doesn't have to eat alone. During these times I feel like a maid that is expected to have sex. When his schedule is like this, I find it very difficult to have sex with him. When it slows down, we have sex a couple times a week. He is always the initiator.

Earlier this year, I finally went to a "boutique" medical facilility that specializes in hormore replacement for treating low libido in women. I have struggled most of my adult life with a very low libido. I received testosterone. I believe it has helped me. I do think about sex sometimes now where before, I never did. Sex has been more pleasurable when we have it. I am trying to do whatever I can to make sex more important to me. I know it's important to him. After our argument this morning, I kept waiting for a phone call or text from him telling me he wants a divorce.

After all this, what do I do to meet my husbands needs? I feel like the only way to make him happy is offer sex daily in the morning, call him multiple times throughout the day and be constantly touching him when he walks through the door. Then I wonder, what about my needs?

Welcome to MB.

Yes indeed: what about your needs?

I think it was a mistake for you to use the book His Needs Her Needs as your manual after the affair. The book you should be using is Surviving an Affair. You seem to have both bought into the idea that the affairs happened because of your husband's unmet needs, and indeed, the HNHN book certainly makes those connections. I believe that there might be a new edition of HNHN that breaks the connection between unmet needs and affairs, but I haven't seen a copy yet.

My point is that you are being guilted into believing that the affairs were your fault and that the way to avoid them in the future is for you to meet your husband's needs unfailingly. However, such a position is unsustainable - and anyway, what about what our husband owes you? What compensation is he giving you for having broken your heart and blown up your life, and left you sitting in the rubble?

I am repulsed by the way your husband is making you feel bad about not waking up good to go for sex, but more importantly, if he doesn't stop this immediately, you will be repulsed by him, and by sex with him, altogether.

Before offering you any more advice, could you please tell us about the affairs? How many were there, how long ago, under what circumstances did they take pace (eg. with a work colleague? Old girlfriend? How did they meet up?) and how did they end? Were these women married, and do their husbands know about the affairs, directly from you? How old are your kids and do they know about the affairs? Do your parents (on both sides) know about the affairs? How do you know that contact has been cut off entirely?

I'll stop now and give you a chance to answer.

Sugar Cane,

I don't know that I have been guilted into believing the affairs were my fault. But I do believe whole heartedly, that if I don't figure out how to meet my husbands sexual needs that I am inviting trouble. We go through these periods of time whether harvest, planting, fulfilling a large grain contract or side-dressing, where we are out of contact for much of the day. It's during these times when we have the most issues getting his needs met. It's almost as if he's blind to the fact that I can't give him attention if I'm not around him. I figured out that if he works 14 1/4 hours and sleeps for 7 hours, that leaves 2 1/2 hours for showering, eating, and visiting with me and his kids if they are awake. He's exhausted and stressed and I've been managing the house and children on my own.

I keep the books for our farm operation and our trucking business. There are days when I am busier than he is, although that is not the norm. Today, I've brought two meals to him in the field. When I saw him at 7pm, he told me he would be late getting home tonight. The long days when he isn't home for dinner and he's too preoccupied to talk worry me. It's during these times when all my fears from the affairs come back.

In June of 2019 we moved to a new house. We were still basically in the same community. In November (on my son's 7th birthday) I was at my parent's house. My husband was in the field. I looked at my Facebook account and saw a post had been shared to my account from another Facebook acquaintance. The woman stated she had an affair with my husband and blasted him out on Facebook for all to see. I read everything she posted. I knew that a lot of it was true. I asked my husband about it and he denied it. The next day, he finally came clean about the 2 year long affair he had with her. He told me they met in person 2 times and slept together once. But that wasn't all...there were several other affairs to. As many as 6 of them involved sexual contact with another woman and there were more yet that he talked to that fulfilled his need to have attention. During these years, we were having trouble with my daughter who eventually went to live with her Dad. All of this took place from the time my son was 2 years old until he was 7 years old. About once a month or every couple of months, my husband announced that he needed to get away for the day. He would leave early in the morning and come home late at night. I would stay home and care for our son and my step-son while he was out having fun doing whatever he was doing. He created a fake name and fake background that he went by with these women. I discovered somethings about the affairs all at once and learned about other things a little at a time. My parents and his parents both know that this took place. The kids at 7 years old and 10 years old never knew about the affair, but I'm sure they must have known I was upset about something.

I believe he has cut off contact with any of the women from the initial time period of affairs. When we talk about it he reassures me that he's committed to me and to our marriage and he has no interest in getting into a relationship with another woman. To my knowledge, none of the women were married. He met all of these women online.

Before I got the testosterone treatment, I was sometimes repulsed by sex. I definitely had an aversion to it. It was nearly always done out of a sense of duty. I have more desire now, but it's just not enough, in the right way or at the right time.

When we argue, it's because he feels rejected because I don't meet his needs for sex and affection. He's right, I'm not always good at that. After the affairs, he admitting to hiding how much affection and sex he actually needed from me because he was afraid of scaring me. Instead of talking it out, he found other women to meet the need. Now that I know what he needs, I don't feel emotionally prepared or able to do it.

I can see very well that this is how you feel.

The thing is, you can probably solve the low libido problem sooner rather than later. Working with your doctor or a specialist, you can play around with the dosage of testosterone until you find the level that makes you very interested in sex. You don't really need help from Marriage Builders in order to solve that problem.

However, what you DO need Marriage Builders help with is your overall relationship. The way your husband has behaved is appalling, and his many affairs say everything about his attitude to scoring with women and about his attitude to marriage. Based on that description of his affairs, he isn't fit to be married, and unless he changes his very evident view that it is your sexual failings that drive him to have affairs, you will never feel safe. No woman deserves to be in a marriage where she is made to feel like that. And although you deny that you are being made to feel guilt for causing his affairs, it is clear that he is doing that by demanding sex from you no matter how you feel.

You might not think that he demands sex, but when he gets angry because you are not in the mood, that is the same as making a selfish demand. A selfish demand is what Dr Harley calls a love buster. Love busters do the opposite of building romantic love; they kill love.

If, throughout your marriage, he has been demanding sex without being loving towards you in his routine interactions with you, and demanding it at times when you feel least aroused, I wouldn't be in the least surprised that THAT is the reason behind your so-called "low libido". Dr Harley, who wrote HNHN, says that women in love have no problems desiring their husbands sexually. However, if the husband commits what Dr Harley calls 'love busters", they quickly destroy any feelings of love. When they selfishly demand sex, they can also quickly create a sexual aversion, and that's what seems to be going on with you.

Your husband's behaviour with his affairs has been odious. In addition to that, your lifestyle, where you do not get much, if any, quality romantic time together because of his long working days, will not allow you to build romantic love.

Indeed not. Women don't want to "make love" with men that make them unhappy. Your husband has made you deeply unhappy, and he is basically expecting you to get over it and put out like a wife should.

Your marriage and your husband's affairs are the problem, not your "low libido". Your low libido is being caused by your husband. If he wants a wife that desires him, he needs a root and branch reorganisation of his life and his attitudes to marriage, love, and sex.

Could you please simplify this timeline?

How long have you been married?

How many kids did you each already have? What ages were they then/are they now? What happened to end those previous relationships?

How many kids do you have together? What ages?

How soon in the marriage did the affairs begin?

How many affairs have there been?

How long did each last?

How did each one end?

When did the most recent one end?

How do you know what you know about the affairs? Do you know anything independently of what he told you? Do you have any proof of anything, such as his alleged non-contact with any of the women? Are you able to monitor his online activity? If he contacted them online, how do you know that he is not still contacting them, or contacting new women? Were any of these online women using him for money?

Do you have proof of their identities? Most people who post here know the name of the affair partner. Do you even know that much?

In addition to all of SugarCane’s questions. Have any of his affairs been exposed and if so who have they been exposed to?

I am going to add a different perspective. My FIL and BIL both farm, on a small scale full time. [Predominately hay, some straw, and some beef cattle.]

I do understand the excessively long hours that is required for this kind of work, and I also understand your desire to maintain the books and the homelife, I have no further to look that my inlaws in this respect. If they ain't making hay, they ain't making money.

Their work is very seasonal and weather dependent. So if there is a bout of rain, and they cannot work the fields, that is when they do an excessive amount of time together with their respective spouses to make up for the loss in other areas.

Before I even met my BIL, he found his now exW in bed with another man when he came early well before I even met my wife, he divorced her, and remarried a number of years later (about a decade later).

2-1/2 hours per day availability sounds about right with a few minutes for you. My BIL does make a few minutes available to his wife each day and his wife accommodates his 'busy' schedule in this respect. I also know my BIL, does carve out time for his children, my children, for important life events, when he could be making hay. He just leaves the equipment in the field where they are, takes a break, and then returns. He understands the importance to make time to fill her needs in this respect, it requires sacrifice of money, in order to fulfill the other needs (predominately family commitment, but includes intimate conversation, recreational companionship, among others) that are too often neglected in this line of work of farming the fields.

It sounds like both of you need to make more time together, a minimum of 15 hours per week, and if it is as bad as you say it is, 30 hours per week of uninterrupted time together where you meet his needs for 15 hours and he does the same for you, meeting your needs. An impossible number considering the available time, my wife has the same issue towards me, and before I retired, I too had the same issue towards her being a sailor (think long haul trucking on the water).

I noticed that you said that you also had a trucking business too, and that it is not weather dependent (other than the occasional blizzard during winter) which is what I am assuming he is doing in the off season.

My suggestion is to re-evaluate the amount of work you guys are doing to carve out quality time for each other, this means sacrificing areas where you could be working to make money (examine the budget chapter of HNHN).

If your children are old enough, you may want to ride with your husband while trucking - I am assuming it is 'long haul' style, and become a husband/wife team. "Long haul trucking" is ripe for affairs if you are not a husband/wife driving team. If your children are too young to do this, consider dropping the trucking business, return the truck after the lease is complete, and use the off season / rain periods for both of you to revitalize your marriage by fulfilling each others needs.

This last point is very important, both of you need to be on board with making the marriage work, it needs to be a 50/50 effort where he puts in his fair share along with you. It won't work if both of you don't have an enthusiastic agreement on this.

Since your time availability is intermittent (weather and/or seasonal), make the best of it during those times, do an excessive amount of love bank deposits during these periods, which will sustain you for the periods between these times together, with too much work being done. In essence I am suggesting a shift in both of your priorities to 'make your marriage work' within the constraints that you have.

For the off season, plan vacations, even if it is inexpensive tent camping, or full blown ones (if you can afford it).