Illustration: Alex Mellon/The Guardian
This may be more to do with ageing than a lack of love. Talk about it – hopefully you can work out a new repertoire together
My husband and I have been together for six years. He is 60, 20 years older than me**. We had a baby last year and went through a really difficult time in our relationship. Things are better after some couples therapy, but we are both still unhappy with our sex life.**
I take a while to orgasm, and he gets very impatient and essentially just gives up (he always orgasms first, and quickly). I also have longstanding health issues that make sex painful. He has always been respectful when I say I can’t have sex because of the pain. But he gets defensive and unkind when I ask him to try new things to give me pleasure. He bought sex toys and says these were his way of trying, but I saw them as a way of him passing off a job he can’t be bothered to do.
He recently told me he has been the lover to “lots of” women. I am wondering if he saw himself as the pleasure-giver to those women, rather than their husbands**, and that he has now,** sub consciously, transferred that into our marriage.
He says he had a lot of sex before we met, so has sort of resigned himself to masturbation (I’m not willing to accept that**). But he says he wishes I would feel pleasure and** that I deserve it. He has suggested me sleeping with other men – as long as I don’t tell him about it. While I would consider non-monogamy if it was the only option, I wouldn’t want to be sneaking around.
I had an active sex life before we met, and it was never just about orgasms – it was about the anticipation, and feeling sexy**, wanted and emotionally bonded. I’d love that with my husband.**
I think you’ve hit on something: your husband has been used to being the lover of women without any of the responsibilities attached. Now, he’s a husband, which is a different ballgame. I’d be interested to know how long ago the last of these “relationships” was and why he decided to settle down.
I went to sex and relationship psychotherapist Silva Neves. “It sounds as if the sexual problem is to do with connection,” he said. “It’s important for a good sex life to want to get to know our partner’s body, what turns them on, how they like to be touched. But it sounds like there is little interest or curiosity from your husband.”
Neves felt this could be “to do with ageing, or maybe he has low energy or low testosterone. It doesn’t sound like he doesn’t care about you – more that he doesn’t think he can meet your sexual needs. It may be worth having some proper conversations about that so you can understand what is behind his lack of interest.”
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You could have an open relationship, but that is on your husband’s terms again, isn’t it? Neves wondered if you could “keep a loving relationship by not putting pressure on yourselves to make sex work, and meet that need elsewhere”? On the other hand, he said, couples can navigate the changes that happen with ageing or after having a baby if both make efforts to adapt. “One way to start is to step outside the usual sexual scripts: I ‘should’ do this, he ‘should’ do that. Instead, how about going back to the drawing board and figuring out a whole new sexual menu together?”
If your husband really won’t engage, that in itself is an answer. Sex often shows cracks in relationships to which we want to turn a blind eye. It doesn’t sound as if you two have ever been sexually compatible. Given the paucity of other details about how you get on, I have to ask: what is worth saving here and do you really want to?
Every week, Annalisa Barbieri addresses a personal problem sent in by a reader. If you would like advice from Annalisa, please send your problem to ask.annalisa@theguardian.com__. Annalisa regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions__. The latest series of Annalisa’s podcast is available here__.
