Reader Question: Women & Sexless Marriages – Do They Even Care?

This week’s reader question comes from YouTube and focused on women and sexless marriages.

Why do wives think sex isn’t important during marriage, but while dating, they had sex more?

Well, there are a lot of ways to answer the question this question as I think there are various things that can happen in relationships that result in sexless marriages.

While I’m sure there are women out there who use sex as a weapon and are bitchy and intentional about stopping the intimacy in their partnership, but I like to believe that’s not the norm.

Here’s what I think can happen to women that result in the intimacy disappearing within a marriage or long-term relationship.

Photo by kevin liang on Unsplash

She turned into “Mom.”

I think motherhood takes a toll on women in many ways. Perhaps more so now then ever before in history. Many of us work full-time. We want to be Pinterest perfect moms. Soccer games and the PTO and all the things.

It turns out when you devote 100% of yourself to your children, you have nothing left for yourself, your partner, or your marriage.

Women are also crazy depressed.

Almost one in five US women are on anti-depressants (which also kills you libido, by the way). With 20% of women depressed enough for medication, it’s no wonder people aren’t getting it on. One of the first symptoms of depression (and one that’s rarely talked about) is the loss of libido and no longer desiring sex.

So when everyone is overwhelmed and anxious and sad, they don’t even think about wanting to have sex.

They’re on hormonal contraceptives.

Which I totally get. You have to do something to make those babies stop coming. But for some women, hormonal birth control can wreck havoc on their libido and sexual function. From no sex drive to vaginal dryness, birth control pills stop you from conceiving in more ways than one.

And if a woman is on Depo Provera, a common birth control shot, it can be even worse. Depo does such a fantastic job at ruining someone’s libido, some states give it to sex offenders in prison to eliminate their sex drive. They call it chemical castration.

And we’re giving it to married women and wondering what the fuck is wrong.

Photo by Yuris Alhumaydy on Unsplash

And sometimes sex hurts.

More women than men realize have pain with intercourse. Sometimes it’s from vaginal dryness. Sometimes it’s from atrophy. Sometimes it’s left over from childbirth or trauma.

But when sex hurts, it’s easy to set it aside. It’s easy to make the excuse it doesn’t matter. It’s easy to say that part of you is broken and gone for ever.

They forget.

On top of all that, it’s easier for women to forget about sex. We don’t have the testosterone levels that men have so when we stop having sex, that level drops even more and sex isn’t on our minds.

And when you’re not having, and months start to go by, you don’t even realize it. You simply kind of forget about it and how much you love it.

Photo by Mark Pan4ratte on Unsplash

They don’t realize the consequences.

There are some women out there who don’t think their husbands care about not having sex. They think their partners are okay with the occasional one-a-quarter lay. Because their husband’s stopped complaining about it. Because they’ve stopped asking for so much sex.

But it’s not that he doesn’t care. It’s that he’s given up. These men are depressed. And ashamed. And lonely. And angry. And building resentment.

And their wives just think everything is perfectly okay.

So dear reader, I wish I had a solution to give you right about now. One that would wrap it all up in a pretty bow and fix your sex life and make your wife desire you and all the things. But I don’t.

But here’s what I do have. I have hope. I believe that libidos can be fixed and couples can come back to the wild side after being lost in the desert, so to speak.

So don’t give up. Strive to find a solution.

If you have a question you’d like to see answered, email me at molly@yourbestsexualself.com for your opportunity to be featured in a reader’s question.