Sex Questions from the Twittersphere: Advice for Dealing with a Husband Who Doesn’t Want Sex.
By Dr. Carol Queen • May 6th, 2009 • Category: Blog, Carol QueenQustion: Any advice on dealing with a husband who just doesn’t want it? :’(
(I’ve ‘done it myself’, read For Yourself, but I still tear about it. He has issues, & its hard not to take them on).
Yes, I have several suggestions, plus a kudo for not taking your partner’s issues on, which can indeed be challenging. First, it’s possible some help from a supportive therapist might make a real difference in your life. Ideally, you can get your husband to do a few sessions with you also. If that’s not in the cards:
Make sure your solo sessions are not just perfunctory, but at least once in a while real dates with yourself. The Chinese translation for masturbation is “self-comfort,” and that is clearly an element of what you’re doing, but try to make these experiences even more than that and indulge in self-care and self-love. That means it’s good to add in pleasurable elements of other kinds, not just a fast one with you and your vibrator.
I just addressed a question a bit like yours last night on the fun podcast LadyBrain; that woman’s twist was that she and her husband’s sex frequency was low, though not non-existent, and he had added masturbation into his life on a regular basis (or had never slowed down, perhaps, even when the two of them were younger and had a higher sexual frequency). This may be true of your husband also, and it might — *might!* — be possible that you and he can merge your self-pleasuring practice and do it together, at least once in a while. Couples who have never masturbated together don’t know how intimate and lovely this can be, and while it may not be possible for you two, it’s worth suggesting.
Finally, yours is one of the many scenarios that leads couples to choose polyamory, and perhaps that’s something for you to consider together. Can you find either a casual erotic playspace that you’d enjoy (sex party, swing club, etc.), or a lover or two who understand your primary commitment and will not wish to supplant or threaten it? Not everyone is cut out for this kind of intimate sharing, but many, many couples do it, and it can help stabilize relationships that include a degree of sexual incompatibility. At its best it creates stable, ongoing families of erotic affiliation, not just sexual opportunities outside the duo for one or both partners – not that there’s anything less about that option, as you (going without as you currently are) may well feel.
Here’s some reading material to help you consider the possibilities and skills polyamory could involve for you – I especially recommend the first one. I’d encourage both of you to read these and discuss, as they say in college. Ideally you two will address this issue together and create a plan that moves you in a direction that allows you to include partnered pleasure in your life once again.
The Ethical Slut (Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy)
Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage (Jenny Block)
Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships (Tristan Taormino)
Polyamory: The New Love Without Limits (Deborah Anapol)
Good luck!–CQ
Dr. Carol Queen >> Carol Queen is a writer, speaker, educator and activist with a doctorate in sexology. First as an organizer in the lesbian/gay community, where she helped found one of the first gay youth groups in the United States, and later in the emerging international bisexual community, as a sex worker and a practitioner of alternative sexualities, she typically teaches and writes from her own experience and that of her communities even as she references academic thought on these subjects. See her website: www.carolqueen.com.
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