5 Things That Make a Woman in a Sexless Marriage Feel Worse

What’s worse than not having sex? Being reminded of not having sex.

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve Googled “sexless marriage.” The first couple of searches just confirmed that I was, in fact, in one (see here, for example). After that it was more about simple recognition that I wasn’t alone (i.e here, here), and a search for answers to a problem that I’ve yet to solve.

My husband and I have been together almost 17 years, and we’ve been married for 9. We have two sons under 7 years old, one of whom has special needs. But our troubles in the bedroom don’t seem to fit the typical story of other people in our stage of life.

That’s because we have struggled with intimacy since the very early days of our relationship, when we were both in our early 20's. It started a few months into dating, when we had moved to different states and were beginning what would be many years of long-distance dating. After a particularly long period apart, my then-boyfriend didn’t initiate sex at all during our first night back together. And then he continued not to initiate, neither of us showed much desire, he avoided addressing the issue… and now here we are almost two decades later.

Since having our two sons, we have gone up to three years without sex. At one point I initiated an open marriage that failed miserably (more on that another day). We’ve been in marriage counseling for over two years, which has helped our marriage in some ways. I have brought up divorce, but we just aren’t ready yet.

I face constant reminders that I am missing out on one of life’s basic pleasures by staying in this marriage. But as a woman living in a sexless marriage, there are some moments that stand out as especially painful reminders of my predicament.

1. Answering her OB/GYN’s questions about birth control options

This is an important and entirely reasonable question for an OB/GYN to ask a patient during an annual exam. But I have dreaded this question for years. In some cases, the “what are you currently using for birth control?” question has made me avoid scheduling exams altogether.

Somehow even the “pull and pray” method seems like a more acceptable answer than “abstinence” when you’re married. Lately I’ve just said “nothing” and made it clear I didn’t want to discuss my options.

And if you happen to be an OB/GYN, here is how to make a woman in this position really feel shitty. At her 6-week postpartum checkup when she is barely functioning and most definitely not choosing that time to address the sexual problems in her marriage, remind her several times that she can still get pregnant while nursing and offer to put in an IUD “just to be safe.”

2. Hearing her friends joke about how often they turn their husbands down

I’m lucky to have friends I can be open with, and most of my closest friends know about my marriage struggles. But I’ve been to countless gatherings where at least one heterosexual married woman started lamenting about how often her husband wants to do it and how often she has to turn him down.

“If it were up to him, we’d be doing it every night.”

I get that the cliché of men having higher sex drives is not accurate. But in this case I would just love to be the cliché. I would love to be desired this much.

3. Getting a “weekend away” with her husband

These are rare, but my husband and I have had several opportunities to spend short trips away from our sons. Some of these trips were explicit attempts to carve out more time for our relationship.

Unfortunately, almost all have just amplified our problems. We’ve spent many of these trips bickering about our relationship.

And even far from our children and the stressors of home, we still prefer to reach for our Kindles at the end of the night rather than each other.

Luxurious hotel rooms and king beds just make not having sex even worse.

4. Waking up from a sex dream

Oh man. I have had my fair share of these. When I was younger they were full-on dreams with sexual fantasies and random cameos from my exes. As time went on and my situation grew more dire, they became more pathetic. Recently my version of a “sex dream” goes a little like this:

I am feeling confident and beautiful and go to a public place like a restaurant or bar (or sometimes my elementary school from 1992... except now it’s also bar?) A handsome man is there and winks at me or says hi or just tells me I’m beautiful.

That’s it. That’s the whole dream.

Nothing more needs to happen, and my subconscious feels like a new woman. Until I wake up and realize that that glimmer of exquisite male attention was not real. My awake-life reality is that the adult male living in my house hasn’t flirted with me since 2006. And the two male children living in my house usually show me attention by screaming that the yogurt wasn’t opened the right way.

5. Reading an article about putting the “spark” back in her marriage

This is the cliché I see over and over again in my countless internet searches.

You and your husband couldn’t keep your hands off each other in the early days. But now the daily stress of children and jobs has made it difficult to find time for sex. The solution?

Schedule sex. Buy sexy lingerie. Take a weekend away to reconnect (see #3 above). Try new positions. Just have sex a lot and the desire will come.

There was a time when advice like this gave me a glimmer of hope. Now it just makes me feel terrible, because it always makes me feel like my sex problems are less “fixable” than most people’s.

Our problems started long before we married and had kids, and so far none of these bits of advice have helped us maintain real desire for each other.

If you are also worried about your sexless marriage, I recognize my story offers no solutions for you. A dead bedroom is a bleak place to be. But I hope that I can at least help you recognize that you, most definitely, are not alone.