When We Don’t Have Sex, My Husband Blames Me

Chronicle of an Open Marriage #36

It was Tuesday — my designated night with HoneyBear, the lover my husband and I share. But this time, instead of bringing him straight to the bedroom, I planned to take him out on the town. Hubs teased me about that: “If you aren’t going to satisfy your man, I’ll be happy to do it.” He also teased HB. “If Tris withholds sex from you tonight, like she does from me, you know where you can get satisfaction.”

And therein lies the rub.

I am not withholding sex from Hubs. He hasn’t even asked for any. Yet if a period of time passes in which we don’t have sex — say three or four days — he blames me for it. This is obviously wrong and unfair, but I don’t think it’s uncommon.

Despite all our purported advancement in equality for women, we’re still seen in many minds — including my own deep, dark subconscious — as helpmeets for men, responsible for keeping them healthy and happy. I still see articles about “how to please your man” and read stories and comments on Medium by women who are fed up with the sexual dynamic in their romantic relationships.

I am making notes for counseling. I can’t wait for our next session.

A little background

This sexual disagreement has been the major problem in our long-term marriage and was the impetus for us opening it up more than a year ago. That’s when I asked Hubs to seek sex outside the marriage so he would stop putting pressure on me to provide it, and giving me the cold shoulder if I did not.

In the beginning, I was uninterested in extramarital sex for myself. I had a surfeit already. Why would I want more? But about six months into the experiment, I began a long-distance “sexting” relationship with a man I met online, and suddenly, my libido exploded.

At first, all that sexual energy got directed at Hubs, since my paramour was across the country and unattainable. That made us both very happy! It seemed our problems were solved. But now that I’m having sex with our HoneyBear on the regular, it seems like Hubs and I are back to square one. He’s unhappy with the amount of sexual attention he’s receiving from me, and we’re unable to resolve our differences.

If we could solve this problem, it would mean everything.

Why women might be uninterested

Recently, I’ve read two interesting stories about why women in relationships, and women in general, might be uninterested in sex. Elle Beau ❇︎suggests their disinterest could be due to boredom. Here are two lines from her story that stood out for me:

If the only time you ever intentionally touch is during sex, a woman can start to feel like a sex dispensing machine rather than a lover — and the resentment that will foster is anything but erotic.

That speaks to me because Hubs is extremely shy, which means he finds intimacy so embarrassing that it’s almost painful. And by intimacy, I don’t mean sticking his you know what into my you know where. He can do that very well, thank you. But it’s hard for him to look me in the eye while lovemaking, give me praise or a compliment, or be openly tender.

According to him, this means I have to initiate all our sex, because initiating sex is embarrassing to him, and if I were to refuse him it would be crushing. Yet if I don’t initiate sex frequently enough to satisfy his yearning, Hubs feels upset, which for many men translates to anger.

This creates an impossible situation because, like many women, I don’t walk around most days with spontaneous sexual desire. My desire is responsive. I develop desire in response to circumstances like being found sexy and desirable.

But how can I feel desirable if Hubs never touches me fondly, compliments me sweetly, or initiates sex? As Elle says in her story:

Feeling desirable is a fundamental aspect of female sexuality.

Female sexuality has long been ignored in the quest to explain and understand human sexuality. The bulk of the research and writing has been about men’s desires. And old tropes about who wants sex and who “should be” providing it are suffocating female desire in many bedrooms.

In the second story, Yael Wolfe suggests a range of possible reasons for low female libido including sexual shame, lack of sexual liberation (from patriarchal expectations), and asexuality.

I thought of the “sexting” partner who had awakened my libido while I was reading Yael’s story. Much like me in my marriage, his wife felt put upon by his overwhelming need for sex, so had given him the okay to seek it outside the marriage. But unlike me, she was coming to the conclusion that she was asexual.

That’s not my feeling. I like sex — a lot! I just don’t want to feel that I owe it to my husband, my lover, or anyone. I don’t want to feel forced or obligated to have sex. In order for sex to be fun for me, it needs to be entirely my choice. And of course, I want to feel sexy and desired. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

Here are a few of the many lines that spoke to me in Yael’s story:

Women’s sexuality is always (and I mean always) being controlled, co-opted, diminished, perverted, demonized, disempowered, and exploited — even sometimes in her own intimate relationships. If you and your partner have been together for a very long time, you might have no idea how much she has oppressed, repressed, and suppressed during her relationship with you. You might not have any idea how much your beliefs and behaviors sometimes contributed to this, either.

In some cases, women opting out of heterosexual intercourse is a relief. A decision to protect her body, her heart, and her mental health.

I wrote my own story on this topic about a year ago. It’s my personal chronicle of a lifetime of sexual shame.

After all that sexual negativity, I can honestly say that I am fully enjoying regular sex for the first time in my life now, at age 68.

I was always a sexual being. I always had the capacity to have good and pleasurable sex and even managed to do that once in a while. But society heaped so much sexual shame and confusion upon me that it prevented me from accessing the sexual part of my nature with any regularity — until now.

It’s sad and astonishing to me how many years it has taken to begin to figure out such a basic thing as sex. I am an earnest striver, philosophical, self-reflective, and intelligent. And I’ve been wrestling with this particular problem for most of my life. Yet it’s only in the last six months or so that I’ve been seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. Or more specifically, between my legs.

So how did our date go?

Even with HoneyBear, when the contract is explicitly sexual, I sometimes begin to feel used, triggered by my long history of sexual coercion. And I was feeling that way two Tuesdays ago when I texted him to cancel our regular date.

Would you be terribly disappointed if we skipped tonight, HoneyBear? I’m in some kind of mood. Not blue, exactly, but very much in my head and not in my body…We could also just cuddle. Hahahah! But I know that generally leads to more. But maybe that’s not a bad thing. I’m just trying to communicate that I’m not feeling like a sex maniac today…More like something tender and precious and a little bit bruised…

I worried that HB would get his feelings hurt like Hubs does and withdraw from me, but that isn’t what happened. Instead, he texted back with an alternate plan.

Oh I’m sorry you’re feeling that way. We can skip tonight if you need the time to stew or brew. If you change your mind, we could just go park someplace in the dark, or I could leave you in a park somewhere to gather your thoughts. Sometimes just sitting across the street from your place is a nice place to unwind, looking out at the water. Even at night it’s peaceful.

He ended up taking me out to his place of work, showing me all the expensive equipment there, and explaining in technical terms what he does. Then he asked me what I thought. And when I told him I was impressed, he beamed happily. That warmed my heart.

Afterward, we went out to a Thai dessert cafe that I’d discovered recently, which serves something amazingly delicious called bingsu, which the menu describes as shaved ice, but seems more like a hybrid of ice cream and a snow cone.

While we shared our Mango Tango, HB kept looking at the attractive woman seated next to us — too many times. And when we walked out to the car afterward, I called him on it. “I was looking at the man, too,” he deflected. “I was trying to see what they were eating.” But I wasn’t having it and told him his behavior was bad.

Then he took me by the shoulders and looked me straight in the eyes. “Look, I know who I’m with,” he told me.

Inexplicably, that little interaction turned me on. I liked being spoken to directly and told that I matter. I liked being manhandled in that firm but gentle way. Does that make me a bad feminist? I don’t know. But it sparked my appetite for more adventures outside the bedroom with HoneyBear, and this Tuesday we went out exploring again. We both had a great time.

So here’s my conclusion: I want it all. I want to be sexy and desired. And I want to be cherished and loved. I want attention. I want devotion. I want lust. I want respect. I want everything on offer.

And I don’t want to be told that is too much to ask.

What happened next? Read Chronicle of an Open Marriage #37. Find all of my stories about opening our marriage on the list below, or about sex in general on this one. Get an email whenever I publish. And have an enlightening day.