Love & Sex in Marriage

When I got married to my husband at 19 I thought the myths of ‘say goodbye to sex’ were just a bunch of nonsense. I discovered that as time went by our sex life had begun to dwindle until I got pregnant and out sex life sputtered then died. I found myself at 22 looking at my relationship with distress. I began to wonder if I was no longer appealing, had the pregnancy made him less attracted to me? Was I even still pretty? Don’t get me wrong, he was still loving and doting….we just simply no longer had sex.

After I had my son, I thought perhaps things would go back to normal. But between my husband working hard every day and my own chore of keeping the new baby tended to, we were usually too exhausted for intercourse. Then stress was piled on further when he lost his job and out of desperation we both applied for work. I found work first, so after less than a month after having my son I was working full time at Sears. Anthony signed up for the Air Force and was told that he would be leaving for Basic in 6 months. I found that between the full time job and being a nursing mother, who frequently had to take breaks to pump in my boss’s office, I was thinking less and less about the tender embrace of the man I was head over heels for.

The first time after we had tried to have sex again for the first time after we had our son. I came home with tired but glowing with the promise of the following day off. Our son had been put to bed and my husband was sitting up waiting for me to get home. I closed the door behind me; kicked off my heels and shrugged off my coat; let my purse slump to the floor; and tossed my keys on the table. He got off the couch and smiled at me, the way he used to. You know, one of those smiles that gives you butterflies and gets your heart rate up. I smiled back, I could tell I was blushing, and he reached out and kissed me. I felt myself lean into him and he swept me off my feet and carried me to the couch where he pulled out my favorite body cream and began to rub my sore feet. Then he began to reach up my pant legs to rub my aching calves, to make it easier I unbuttoned my pants and slipped out of them. He rubbed my thighs with the body cream. Before I knew it he had turned me over to massage my buttocks with the body cream, reaching up the back of my shirt to unsnap my bra and massage my back. I unbuttoned and pulled out of my flattering suit jacket and shirt. He smiled again as he grabbed my hand and pulled me into his lap and rubbed the back of my neck and my shoulders, giving me goose-bumps.

I won’t get too detailed about the act itself, but I had become so unexpectedly tight that it was almost like my first time for the second time. It was the first time we had had sex in roughly six months. We had had sex twice during my pregnancy and both times were early on. To this day, I am not certain what brought on the sex that night but I had allowed myself to begin to believe that we were on our way to fixing our broken love life.

As the months neared that he would be leaving for Basic, I felt a sort of urgency and would come on strong towards him. Little did I know that this was also pushing him away. It is true that some men enjoy a woman who knows what she wants and is determined to get it but in my case, it wasn’t an effective route. He began to tell me that he was too tired, or too hungry to have sex. Even when I tried to look my sexiest. Some nights I would cry myself to sleep because though he’d say he was too tired he would still stay awake until 3 in the morning watching T.V. I began to wonder all over again if he had lost interest in me. I began to be very critical of what I saw in my reflection when I looked in the mirror. I thought that if I became more bold or experimental then perhaps he would be excited about sex again, like he had been in the very beginning.

My husband is the only person I’ve ever been sexual with, and to I had made the mistake of thinking that the lack of sex meant he was beginning to love me less. I had begun to look at reason why married couples stop having sex and …. There are a lot of reasons. Just because a relationship might be failing for someone else, being the reason their sex life was snuffed out, doesn’t mean that it’s the reason for yours. A lot of people put the blame on their work, their busy days with their children and over all other obligations. Some even put the blame with their spouse, but for my situation I blamed myself. I told myself I should have lost the baby weight by now, I should start wearing makeup more often on my days off. I should work harder at trying to make him as happy as possible, no matter what it took. He would leave late at night to go drinking with his friends and when he would stay out later than he said he would then I’d start to worry that he was with another woman. Fortunately he wasn’t, but when you are feeling desperate and trying to put yourself out there without getting the desired result …. It can start to become a crushing weight on your shoulders. Ideas start spinning twisting webs with a cruel imagination dancing through them.

One night, he came home late and had been drinking with his cousin. He stumbled into the house, in a cheerful mood and I tried to wipe the tears from my soaking face in vain. I stood at the window, watching the lightning threaten a storm as it lanced across the sky, casting the clouds purple. He came up behind me and wrapped his arms around me, kissed my teary cheek. “Why are you still up?” He asked me, before realizing his lips were newly wet.

I turned to him with my eyes all puffy and red, my nose snotty and equally as red, “Do you still love me?” I was in physical pain as I asked the question. My heart felt like it was burning in my chest and up my throat.

His smile disappeared and I prepared myself for the worst, but then his eyes softened and he reached out to grab me. He pulled me into him and kissed me with all the passion he had had when we were first dating, when we separated his smile had returned, “I love you now, maybe more than ever.” He tried to wipe a fresh wave of tears from my face, “Why would you ever think I didn’t?”

I felt the bloom of new hope unfold over the flames in my chest as I looked into his eyes, “we…we never have sex anymore.” Each breath was painful as I drew it up through a raw throat, “why don’t you want to have sex with me? Do you not find me attractive anymore?”

“First of all,” He said softly, “You’re beautiful, if you weren’t I wouldn’t have married you.” He waited for me to smile. “Secondly, it’s not so important to me. I just enjoy being with you, cuddling on the couch or eating dinner. Sleeping next to you…even without the feeling in my arm. Sex has nothing to do with how much I love you…and I do love you so much.” This was a completely new concept for me, I thought his love for me and sex were tied together. It surprised me that to him, the two were separate. I was always trying to further express my love for him with sex.

It became apparent to me that sex shouldn’t be the foundation to our marriage, yes it is still important to have it occasionally but trying to have sex every night (or every other night) is near impossible when you have a child and jobs. Life, it seems, takes over and new priorities replace the new ones. In the long run, it was probably good that I we had our long dry spell. It prepared me for the complete 9 months of his Basic training and Tech school he did for the Air Force.

I am 24 now and my son is 2, my husband is deployed and again I am settled in for another dry spell. I want to suggest to those who are just entering into their first dry spell, don’t over think the situation. I did it, and all it does is torture yourself with ideas that are just made up to entertain dark suspicions. If you have a child or children, it is even more difficult to find free time. Many times in my sons 2 years my husband and I would start getting intimate and our son would wake up from a nap or have a nightmare and start screaming, in dire need of comforting. It can get frustrating but my husband believes that it will happen when it happens and sometimes you need to try and fail a couple times to get the timing right.

That’s not to say that a little bit of something new isn’t something worth looking into. I have bought a Kama Sutra book and am picking out things that I’d like to try once my husband returns home again. But remember, love and sex are tied at different lengths for different people. For my husband, sex isn’t what makes him love me or make him love me more (which I thought it might) and as for me, I realized that I pushed sex on him so hard because I thought it might strengthen us as a couple. I thought our not having sex regularly meant that we were drifting apart. After talking to him, I learned just how wrong I was. Lust is great, but make sure you communicate with your spouse/ partner so that the two of you are on the same page.

With that I wish you all the best of luck with your relationships. No 2 relationships are the same, you can compare and compare until you’re crazy but that will be the quickest way to destroy your relationship. They aren’t perfect, and there is quite a lot of work involved in marriage but if your spouse/partner is worth it then you will work all the harder to keep it functioning smoothly.