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Dear Vix,
My wife and I haven’t had sex for more than a year – and I’m going out of my mind. It’s making me sad, stressed, sleepless – even physically unwell. I’ve tried tips I’ve read about in other places, like shared calendars for scheduling sex, but it doesn’t seem to work. I’ve tried being direct, and asking for sex, but she fobs me off or says it’s not a good time. I’ve suggested we book a babysitter so we can go out; and have tried to get her in the mood by buying her skimpy lingerie on special occasions. But nothing helps. She just seems distant and moody and turns away, or bats me off like I’m irritating her; or says all she wants is an early night or is always too busy with the kids (which just feels like an excuse). I feel like I’m pestering her and hoping she ‘gives in’.
I’m gutted that we’re young and healthy and have decades more of potentially exciting love-making ahead of us before we get too old and infirm to bother – but instead, here I am: celibate in my late thirties; a cliché of a man.
It’s making me so angry and frustrated that I’ve even considered having an affair – I feel like I deserve it. I just don’t know how much longer I can go on like this.
Frustrated
Dear Frustrated,
Let’s get one thing straight right from the outset: don’t have an affair. Or, do – if you want to exist in a maelstrom of stress and confusion worrying you’ll get found out, which you will, eventually – it’s overwhelmingly likely, because when we live with someone our behaviours are routine until, suddenly, they aren’t – at which point you will completely blow up your marriage, make your wife hate you, render future custody of the kids difficult, lose the respect of people you love and those you work with, lose mutual friends in the process because they’ll usually side with the woman you cheated on, move out to some sad “divorced dad” apartment complex and probably discover the person you had the affair with isn’t interested in a man who lost everything because his wife didn’t want to have sex with him. So, no: don’t have an affair. Or do, but then I’ll expect your next letter.
Here’s what you can actually do that might help your situation, which (believe it or not) I do have sympathy for: talk to your wife. Find out what’s troubling her. If the kids are young and you’re living in a cis-gendered, heterosexual household – where we know, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), that women do about 60 per cent more unpaid work than men (including more domestic labour than men, more childcare than men and carry a greater mental and emotional load than men), it could be that she’s completely exhausted from shunting them to school and to after-school clubs; from making packed lunches and always being the one to respond to playdates and parties; of buying gifts and being the one school calls when there’s a problem, all while working herself.
If they’re super young – babies, even – then she could be physically “touched out” – not simply from birth but what comes immediately afterwards: being the one carrying the child (I mean physically, as in on your hip from morning to night, when it doesn’t end either because half the time they’re grabbing at your body for food or for comfort and reassurance); not to mention breastfeeding. When a child – and this can be a toddler, it can also carry on into the teens – wants to hug you and kiss you and rub their sticky fingers over your face and grab at your stomach because it’s “soft and wobbly” and jump up at you and on you, all of the time, it can be bliss to simply go to bed at night without being touched. It can, quite literally, be the last thing you want – to be pawed at all over again: by a child, by a pet, by a man.
Of course, it could be a “her” problem – your wife might be depressed or anxious, bored or worried, she may even have lost her libido altogether due to illness or stress or burnout or other, even more complicated reasons – but I’d work on the assumption it’s a “you” problem (as in: you as a couple, not you as in directly you, depending on how far you’ve gone with the “thinking of having an affair” groundwork) – and go from there.
I have limited information from your letter so I’m going to make some assumptions on your level of involvement at home. This won’t be true for every man in a heteronormative relationship, of course, but it will apply to many men (just look at the statistics) – and we need to address the elephant in the room, so here goes.
This is the biggest, simplest secret I could possibly share that could have tremendous ramifications for your sex life: foreplay for women does not start in the bedroom, five or ten minutes before you start cracking on. It begins with you putting the dishwasher on the night before. It begins with you remembering that it’s your own mother’s birthday next week, and buying the card yourself. It begins with you cooking dinner, buying the ingredients and washing up afterwards.
Forget Ann Summers or Agent Provocateur: arousal starts with you doing your own laundry and putting your pants (shock) in the (what’s that?) wash bin. It begins with you telling your wife she’s incredible and an amazing mother and asking her how her day was and whether she wants to talk about it – and actually listening. It’s asking her if she wants a massage – and (crucially) giving her one, but not expecting sex.
Get away from grabbing our bottoms: there’s nothing hotter than a man who puts the bins out without needing to be told. And the phrase “Why didn’t you just ask” is an instant turn-off: ban it.
Do your share of the household chores and parenting labour in good time and on your own initiative – and throw in thoughtful gestures, such as telling her she’s even more gorgeous than she was when she was 20; that she’s funny enough to have her own Netflix special, that the way she sees the world helps you find the beauty in it, too. Try telling her that waking up next to her makes every day feel like a poem, that you can’t believe your luck, that you heard this ridiculous thing at work and couldn’t wait to tell her about it.
Text her in the middle of the day – not to ask “what’s for dinner” but because you remembered that time on your third date when she laughed so hard she snorted wine from her nose, and it made you laugh, today, 15 years later. Tell her you miss her even though it’s been two hours since you walked out of the door. Tell her you can’t wait to hug her and breathe in the scent of her hair. Tell her you’re so glad you met her and can’t believe your luck that you’re the one who got to marry her. That every day feels like you’ve won life’s biggest lottery.
Take the kids out on a Saturday morning – swimming or climbing or simply anywhere she isn’t. Tell her it’s all under control, not to worry about a thing, you’ve got this, enjoy yourself. Don’t ask her where the nappies are or which snacks to pack. Say you’ve noticed she’s been stressed out, not seeming herself – so how about she goes to visit that schoolfriend she loves but never gets to see; the one who lives out in the country? Book her train ticket.
Unless there are other, deeper issues you need to spend more time sensitively talking about, you might just find these smaller gestures the key to a happy, lighter, more laidback marriage – and your wife increasingly receptive in the bedroom. You might, in turn, find your moments of connection aren’t just on ABCs (anniversaries, birthdays and at Christmas) – but every day. And I’m not even talking about sex.
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