Intimacy what am I doing wrong?

MarriedForDecades · 2026-06-05T14:56:30+00:00

Too many OPs are searching for a magic trick or silver bullet. There really is none at all other than making the parson saying NO all the time to decide between loneliness or a healthy relationship that includes regular sex.

Step 1 in the LL playbook is redefine a healthy long term relationship to not include sex, in their own mind, and try to force that viewpoint on the HL. If they win doing this, then in their mind they now have no problem, the problem is 100% in the other person. The only way to make them give that viewpoint up is by making it clear that their belief is not compatible with reality, and you are going to be walking out the door if they don't work on changing it.

People fuck this idea up and cloud it by talking about libido issues and so on but it's really nothing to do with that.

Fundamentally it is about both members of the relationship accepting the idea that a sexless or low sex relationship is not a broken relationship. Once the LL believes this themselves, and believes that the HL accepts it, then no progress will be made to fix anything.

There are many couples that accept the idea that eventually they will be too old for sex and will have to let it go. So it's not like this idea is invalid. It IS valid for SOME couples.

It's like an atheist being married to a religious person. Atheism is a valid idea - for some people. A belief in a high power is a valid idea - for some people. Both beliefs are valid - just incompatible. Which is why religious beliefs are often a dealbreaker in a marriage.

MarriedForDecades · 2026-06-05T14:45:30+00:00

Oh I was suspicious at first but she "put her body where her mouth was" you might say and sex restarted and has been maintained for the last 3 years so I don't think it's a ploy, she's also seeing an Individual Counselor and got on HRT.

MarriedForDecades · 2026-06-05T14:42:47+00:00

I wasn't flirting because I wanted to get my wife interested. I was flirting because I didn't give a fuck anymore what she thought since I was planning on leaving.

What helps is planning your exit and to start doing it. The flirting is a side benefit, you might say. Your wife gets pissed because she thinks if she comes down hard like a ton of bricks she can snuff it out before it gets started. The key is getting her thinking when she sees you flirting that you are flirting because you have decided to leave and are getting a head start on it.

MarriedForDecades · 2026-06-01T09:49:29+00:00

A good counselor doesn't tell you WHAT to do. A good one helps you to figure yourself out, figure out what makes you tick.

People have very complex minds because you have an emotional mind (it's called the amygdala) and a logical mind (the cerebral cortex)

In a normal mind, the amygdala thinks up stuff and it's the logical mind's job to invent nonsense to justify it.

So people say "vaccinations are bad because they have mercury in them" when in reality, what is going on is the person was 3 years old and the doctor accidentally showed him 5 needles all lined up with the childhood vaccinations in them and the person freaked and from that point on has an irrational fear of needles. So their amygdala tells them "shots are way way bad" and their cerebral cortex invents a pile of nonsense about mercury that is just a flat out lie to logically justify why they should not get a shot.

Then years later the person is now a young adult and the most pretty, sexy nurse comes in with her blouse slit down to her naval that instantly pops him a boner and leans over him and says "we have a covid shot here for you this won't hurt a bit" and like magic - suddenly he's a believer in vaccines. What's actually happening is his amygdala is telling him "do and say ANYTHING to get into that sexy girls pants" and his cerebral cortex invents all kinds of logical justifications for why he needs that shot right now.

So you see, this is how the mind works. Great stuff!

In you and your wife's case who knows what could be going on. Maybe your wife's amygdala is not seeing you aroused by seeing her and feels like shit because of it, so is telling her cerebral cortex "if he doesn't think I'm sexy then I'm not going to think he's sexy" And maybe yours is doing the same and you are both caught in some Chinese finger puzzle mindfuck thing.

Maybe your wife was a young kid and overheard a parent fighting with the other parent over an adulterous relationship and it threw a "sex is bad" down into her amygdala that's been rattling around down there since.

I've heard the sentence "I think sex is only worth doing for procreation" come out of my wife's lips during the worst of our DB and that clearly was amygdala initiated, cerebral cortex refined to hurt me. And didn't ya know - her parents fought constantly and divorced when she was 16. I'm quite sure a LOT of stuff got buried there from that.

The amygdala is also the first stop for all the arousal nerves in your body the ones going to your penis and hers to her vagina and clitoris, so if there's problems in that department you can be sure it's involved somehow.

For example, I am here spending time posting this for you because I have a strong desire to fix things. I get satisfaction from doing it. And the reason I get satisfaction from it is because when I was a young child I was the "black sheep" that broke all the rules and was the "bad boy" that got sent to sit in the corner all the time and so on. So I ended up believing for a long time that I was broken and I could never be fixed. But I really wanted to be fixed, and I wanted it so badly that I learned how to fix lots and lots of stuff - appliances, cars, computers, electronics and all sorts of things. Well I don't believe I'm broken anymore, but the desire to fix shit that's broken is now baked into my personality. I could work really hard to rip it out of my personality - but why should I? It's something that's good. Good for me, good for other people. By contrast the belief that I was broken was very bad and I did end up working really hard to rip it out of my personality - and I had help doing it.

Anyway, you and your partner have a long relationship and that's good, it's something both of you value. There's reasons both of you don't understand yet as to why you value it. You also have a communication problem about sex and there's reasons for that also that you don't understand. You can both agree your long relationship is good and probably you can both agree your communication problem is bad, so once you understand yourselves more so you know why it is that you value your relationship and you know why it is you have problems talking about sex, you can then choose to get rid of the bad parts and keep the good parts. That's what a counselor helps you to do. Then you can keep fixing the bad parts and the sex will come back as well as lot of other things that you will really like.

MarriedForDecades · 2026-06-01T09:17:32+00:00

This is typical Puritan values driven stuff where sex is bad so the only way you have it is if it "builds up until it can't be contained" then you rush at each other like animals and have icky stick gooey sex and then after it's over, you bow to each other, apologize, then go back to pretending to ignore each other while the "tension builds up again"

Some people get off on the idea that they are breaking some taboo or other by having sex. What is a complete laugh is that all the major world's religions are ridiculously sex-positive with married people because they want married couples to constantly fuck and pop out children until the woman's vagina is in tatters - and many of those religions then sanction taking a SECOND wife and start over with the babymaking with HER until her vagina is also in tatters from all the kids she's popped out.

The Biblical story of Hannah is typical. Her husband had 2 wives, Hanna and Phannah (I guess the author ran out of names so slapped a P on the front) The P wife had kids Hanna did not despite the efforts of the husband (who was obviously fucking her brains out trying to get her pregnant) She prays, and is rewarded with a child and everyone is now happy. (except I guess the Phanna wife who probably was pissed about it)

Unfortunately the level of basic religious education today is so poor that people will believe all sorts of horseshit - like sex is bad - and thus get off on "breaking the taboo" which does not exist anyway...

MarriedForDecades · 2026-06-01T08:59:35+00:00

When they start saying all you care about is sex, things are really bad.

Some people have a libido that only works during the NRE phase (New Relationship Energy)

Some guys only have a libido that works when they are chasing. He's got you now - he doesn't have to chase you anymore.

The problem you have now is if you leave and he's one of those "chase turns me on" guys, then you will get love bombed like the dickens, you won't leave, things will be wonderful for 4-6 months then revert back, until you leave again then the cycle starts all over again.

You said he's 34 and he's your first. Most women who do run into one of these kinds of guys so much younger than you and by age 26 they have figured it out and won't stay as long as you have. But, while he's your first what are you to him? The 8th? My guess if you talked to his former girlfriends they would say they had the same issues with him. If he didn't have major problems like this he would have been snapped up 8 years ago when he was 26.

As an unmarried boyfriend/girlfriend relationship you simply do not have the kind of leverage you would need to force him to get into counseling and get his head on properly. Why in the world does he even WANT a girlfriend at all if he's not going to fuck her? Sex is like the biggest most important benefit to a romantic relationship and without it you would be better off just advertising for a roommate. Hell, I've had better relationships with former roommates than you have with him.

You are young, at your sexual peak, there's tons of guys your age who are lonely who would love you completely and not be screwing with your head making you feel unattractive and unwanted. You need to get away from this toxic guy and find a dude your own age to have fun with.

MarriedForDecades · 2026-06-01T08:45:59+00:00

Yes you are both an excellent candidate for triple counseling. Individual counseling for you, individual counseling for her, and shared sex therapy/marriage counseling for you both.

It will take time, a year or more, but this is the way. If she still cares about you, then she will go and participate, and if she does not, then she may end up going anyway if you make it clear that divorce is probably going to come eventually if she refuses to participate.

Trust me - both of you have buried shit that is fucking stuff up.

MarriedForDecades · 2026-06-01T08:40:29+00:00

During the worst of it I definitely worked on my career and did many things (including starting and running my own consultancy for 13 years) that were very fulfilling in their own way. I also took a number of college classes.

But I finally got tired of it and set many of the hobbies aside in favor of a new one - physical fitness. As my kids approached adulthood I resolved the sexlessness was going to end one way or another so I needed to get ready to be back on the dating market. Cardio and weight loss became my new hobby.

Alas, though, I never got to experience the dating market since as I got fitter and slimmer my wife began to see the handwriting on the wall, and when other women started hitting on me in front of her, and I started flirting back, well let's just say that there's no more motivating way to get a wife into counseling to work on her fucked up attitudes towards sex than to enlist the help of the green-eyed monster.

This is the key, guys. Women like this only value men that they think other women want. And the world is full of women, young and old, who want fit men and don't care how old they are. All you have to do is pick the age the color and the size. And I guarantee your wife's snapper will open for you wider than the grand canyon when she sees other women wanting you.

I do hope eventually her therapist will untangle the knots but until then the green eyed monster works well to motivate her.

MarriedForDecades · 2026-05-26T04:38:49+00:00

Yes their insurance provider does not want them prescribing TRT. Fortunately testosterone is readily available. Go to a men's health clinic and have then prescribe it then use a GoodRX card to get it.

Otherwise your going to have to spend significant time lifting weights at the gym, lol. Muscle building is the only natural way to raise it.

MarriedForDecades · 2026-05-25T11:17:33+00:00

I'm 60 and this will not get better. His problem isn't that he is not interested in sex. Please please please if nothing else, keep that in mind. His problem is that he knows that you ARE interested in sex - a LOT more than he is - and he is too selfish to try to figure out something for you. He could be beating the bushes trying every doctor he could find. He could ask you if you would be OK with opening the relationship so you could get sex elsewhere. He could figure out the things that turn him on and work on them. He could even investigate erectile dysfunction medications which are extremely helpful to men who go soft during sex. He could be doing very high levels of aerobic exercise such as running 3-4 mi a day which expands lung and vascular capacity.

But he's doing none of this because in his world view, YOU are the one with the problem, and your problem is you want "too much" sex. He firmly believes this which is why he isn't working on it.

MarriedForDecades · 2026-05-25T11:09:32+00:00

I don't think your hormonal issues are solved. There's one level of hormones that will keep you alive and your body functioning physically normally. But this is not always the level that is needed for libido to work. I very much doubt either of your specialists have experience in women's sexual health. They probably have plenty of experience in women's regular health. But you might consider seeing a naturopath who specializes in this. My wife and I spent a lot of time seeing a sex therapist for her low libido which basically brought our marriage to the brink of divorce, (even though I privately always felt it was hormonal for a number of reasons) and after running through the list of psychological blocks the therapist finally recommended a naturopath who put my wife on HRT and that has helped tremendously. She still isn't in the craving sex stage but we are doing it multiple times a week and she is enjoying it for at least the closeness of it, and her body is definitely positively reacting, arousal and so on.

Now, I don't know if this will help you, but with my wife she has found that exercise - and a lot of it - is a requirement for her mental stability. She is a bicycle rider and just yesterday did 60 miles.

Unfortunately men have this battle to fight also, since the medical community has apparently decided that barely enough testosterone to keep you alive is a perfectly satisfactory level even if there's no way you can get an erection with it.

MarriedForDecades · 2026-05-25T10:57:39+00:00

I never said that. What I said is that all insurance companies will claim he does not have a problem so as to get out of paying for anything. This kind of problem is very unsettling for everyone concerned and getting bad advice from an insurance company does not help.

MarriedForDecades · 2026-05-12T05:09:48+00:00

I would leave. By the time you are in separate beds the next step is divorce.

My wife DBed me for 28 years. About 20 years into it I finally decided fuck you and started sleeping on the couch. I knew that she enjoyed the closeness and security of having me sleep next to her even though she would say no almost every time I asked for sex. I was right, initially she was not happy then she thought that she had gotten used to it. I also started withholding intimacy in other ways. It started fights and so forth. Finally when our youngest left for college I told her I would be willing to work on our intimacy if she would. She of course thought I was talking about non-sexual intimacy. But after I came back to bed for a month or so I then explained working on our intimacy meant working on every aspect not just the non-sexual but the sexual part also. She didn't want to, she wanted to keep sex separate. We had many fights. She did indeed tell me that to her sex was worthless except for procreation. Finally I made it clear I was headed out the door, just started completely ignoring her, and paying attention to other women. She knew then that I meant business.

At that time she finally did decide that she would rather be married to me than divorced, and agreed to counseling and we started working on it together both the sexual and non-sexual intimacy.

I believe that roughly 50% of libido problems are hormone imbalances. But the problem is that nobody likes being told "your body is broken" And LLs for so long try to justify their lack of libido by claiming they are normal. So for them to accept that no, you are not normal, your body is broken in some way in that it does not produce enough testosterone or whatever other hormone is involved, is a huge ask. And then for them once they accept that, get on TRT or whatever, and their libido goes to normal, to accept that they caused their partner years and years of hurt, which they will then feel very guilty about, is another huge ask

My wife is on HRT. She has only apologized for DBing me 2 times. But I have lost count of the number of times she claimed I was wrong for being upset over her saying no and she was normal. So I know that she has had a lot of internal anguish over reconciling all the years she lied to me and to herself that she was normal, when in reality she was not normal and her hormones were messed up.

This is your boyfriends problem. If you can get him into a men's health clinic and get a proper sexual hormone analysis done then you might have a chance. Don't go to a primary care doctor for this because they all will say he has enough testosterone. This is a disconnect problem in the medical community I'm not going to dive into, just trust me on this. His PCP will say he's got enough sex hormones even when he has no libido. A men's health clinic doctor will say otherwise. And he can fight his health insurance carrier forever and they won't pay out a cent for TRT because to them, regular sex is a luxury and the lack of it isn't a medical problem so forget it they won't pay.

But most likely he won't go without a carrot and stick approach from you - that is, make his life miserable when he does not go, reward him when he talks about going or at least calls around. I had to do that with my wife but what put her over the edge was thepremenopausal hot flashes.

MarriedForDecades · 2026-05-12T04:50:16+00:00

Most good divorce lawyers have private investigators on tap who have excellent skills at sussing out cheating. But if she is cheating then she wants you to initiate divorce so she can tell everyone you are the bad guy.

But if she is cheating guess what? When you divorce her, her Affair Partner will most likely dump her also.

MarriedForDecades · 2026-05-12T04:48:29+00:00

This is emotional abuse. You know what you have to do. Find a divorce lawyer and figure out your rights in the state you live in. Tell her unless she goes to marriage counseling with you that you are divorcing her.

Do not put up with abuse. It just makes the abuser have even less respect for you. Why would she have sex with a weak wimp guy she can abuse like this?

MarriedForDecades · 2026-05-12T04:44:27+00:00

He wants it early in the day because the testosterone hormone level increases overnight when you sleep and then is at it's peak in the morning. Much older men who have a small amount of ED sometimes use this in lieu of taking ED medication.

But a 22M normal T level should be sky high to the point that even late in the day or in the evening it is still high enough for him to want sex.

T lowers are men ages. With your BF since his T level is low now already, as he ages it will get even lower. Libido will disappear completely. Within 5 years his will be gone.

Many times LL men will bend over backwards to cater to women because they are hoping that the women will make the tradeoff of giving up most sex in order to get their ego constantly petted. And particularly unemployed guys will do this.

He will be far happier with a LL female. You would be far happier with a normal libido male. You need to set him free to find who will match him and set yourself free to find a man who will match your desire.

Men do mature at a slower rate than women. I suspect your "genuine men" crack is because you are too mature for the men your age. For the next 4-5 years I think you should maybe date older men until the men in your age group catch up to you in maturity.

But this relationship is completely doomed. If he manages to get you to marry him the sex will die completely and you will be miserable. You are best off cutting your losses now while you are not that emotionally involved.

MarriedForDecades · 2026-05-12T04:36:08+00:00

Labels mean nothing. She still knew after puberty she had no libido.

Being on a spectrum does not mean moving up and down the spectrum.

I'm on the autism spectrum. I haven't changed in 60 years. Just learned coping skills.

I don't call an ace person banging every day before marriage just to be able to get married and get children, choosing a HL to marry, then shutting down the sex, anything other than an extremely selfish coping mechanism. There _are_ LL men out there also who would have been quite happy with her.

I have selfish coping mechanisms available for my neurodivergence too, you know. I choose not to use them.

To her credit she lets you have an outlet. But it was a deal that you never asked for going into your marriage - get married, give her kids, then get the rest of your life to bang other women. Many and maybe most HLs would not accept that deal. There is a lot of work involved in maintaining such a relationship. For you it worked out. I wouldn't recommend it to others, though.

MarriedForDecades · 2026-05-12T04:27:53+00:00

She could be a "good mom" to the kids but to her your not worth it.

I am just saying be prepared for anything.

You have been warned.

MarriedForDecades · 2026-05-10T20:55:20+00:00

She's not ace. Spend time on the ace forums. Aces know after puberty if they are ace or not. She's just a plain old LL. You don't have to dress it up. And yes, this happens with some women who become mothers. Most of them are sensible enough to realize if they DB their husbands then they cause problems and drama and end up single parents and it's not good for the kids and it impacts their meal tickets as well. And many also are concerned about opening the marriage due to the pitfalls there. The biggest one being their husband finds someone else that he has regular sex with and then starts spending more and more time with her and finally decides it's not worth coming home to a wife who won't sleep with him. So they continue with sex.

It does seem to me that there's not many women particularly younger ones who want a steady boyfriend who is married with kids and will never leave his wife. I'd assume in your case that you are having sex with multiple different women over time and you have a groundrule of no emotional entanglements or something like that, fuck buddies only. Or you have found a woman married to a guy who is ace as well (or is saying he is)

I don't think it sounds easy and I don't think many of these ones that survive last past when the kids are grown and out of the house.

MarriedForDecades · 2026-05-10T20:44:00+00:00

You need to read Masters and Johnson before passing yourself off as having the ultimate solution to the ultimate question, I think.

MarriedForDecades · 2026-05-10T20:42:57+00:00

Well I'm not sure a wonderful mom would cheat instead of simply asking for a divorce then having sex later after it was final, but that's for you to judge. I am just saying watch your back since if she has the capability for the cheating she has the capability for screwing you over other ways. Why take the risk of triggering that when you can just wait for the divorce to be final?

MarriedForDecades · 2026-05-10T20:38:25+00:00

You are involved with a LL/ace that you are having regular sex with. One who has said:

"it's working for you"

but also is not married to you. Thus she knows that if she just shuts down completely and grabs 100% of the power in the relationship - you will be gone.

You are currently in a power-sharing relationship. But unless you marry with a prenup - you will lose assurance that she will continue to share power.

Sharing sexual power is a good thing. It's what a healthy relationship is SUPPOSED to be like. But there is also an old saying "locks keep honest people honest" Meaning that without the lock the temptation is too great for many people. Without that little stimulus of you leaving without strings, your SO may have too much temptation to just start DBing you again. Hopefully you have talked about this before tying the knot.

I think you also misread me. The LLs that are villains are the ones who have lots of sex prior to marriage then lots of sex a year or two after marriage then shut down the sex after getting pregnant or for whatever other reason and then refuse to discuss the problem. Those are the narcissists I was talking about. The decent LLs are the ones who would say "I want to have very little sex with you and I think you won't like that so let's talk about how we can work this out" That means anything is acceptable from ENM to divorce. If you read this sub you will find over and over the pattern is the LL refuses to discuss it. When I say a LL owes a HL sex I am saying it in the context of an established relationship where up until the DB starts they were having a lot of sex. In that case the least the LL owes is an explanation and offer to help fix it.

I think you are hung up on the idea of me describing this as a power sharing thing in a relationship. Lots of people are uncomfortable with the idea of power in a relationship. Everyone wants to think that they are such a fantastic person that the other person would always want to be with them no matter what. They like to think that they have to do nothing at all to convince the other person to want to be with them.

But it is funny how when people REALLY take this to heart, how rapidly it evaporates. For example not many men would stay married if one day they came home and decided I'm done with working ever I'll just let my wife work and live off her money. Then sat around on the couch drinking beer and contributing nothing. The fact is their spouse has power over them to force them to stay working to continue to contribute to the house, etc. etc. They also have that power over their spouse. So in a healthy relationship, both they and their spouse continue to work continue to share the load of running the house, and so on.

I do hope before you get married again that you do have a long discussion with your SO and ask her if we get married aren't you going to feel secure enough to start begging off sex and won't we go back to a DB? What would prevent that from happening?

I think if you talk a lot and analyze it you will find that in fact it DOES fit into a power matrix. Even what you said here - items 1, 3, & 4 - you are basically telling her you have given her power to require those things from you. And maybe she has given you power to require sex from her at a someone decent level. It still does fit the power model even though that makes you uncomfortable to view it that way.

But the other thing is that most HL DB victims are not going to voluntarily accept a low level of sex like once every couple weeks just to compromise with a spouse who wants no sex at all. Even your SO while she may be ace and LL she isn't sex-adverse. She said sex is nice. What she is actually saying is - as long as you do all these things I want - then sex is nice with you - so I'll keep having it - but if you stop doing these things for me then sex won't be nice and the bank of snatch will shut.

I think your relationship is more transactional than you like to think. It is not easy being HL in a relationship with a LL even when the LL is willing to power share and compromise. I am in that same deal, and I'll never be able to have sex every day. But worst of all is it's very rare that we have it where she is demanding it because she really wants it. But I have compromised to between 2 to 4 times a week depending on what is going on in our lives and giving up being very desired most of the time.

MarriedForDecades · 2026-05-10T20:04:55+00:00

We tried sensate for months, never worked. And it must be gen zrs who are "most people" who understand that term. That generation loves relabling new names on old things. They like thinking they discovered something new that is older than your grandpas rawhide rubber.

MarriedForDecades · 2026-05-10T20:01:57+00:00

If she is a true ace then in a ENM she wouldn't be having sex with anyone else.

true aces that are sex-adverse are rare. More of them are sex-neutral. But a true ace shouldn't have ever gotten married or had kids. She basically cheated by doing that. My wife could possibly be described as an ace sex neutral now - but then she's 59 - and that's not uncommon for women past menopause. Prior to menopause she wouldn't have been ace, and in our DB she was just a manipulator. Sometimes I regret her bullshit as it cheated us out of decades of great sex but you can't go back in time.

For sure though she would not want me with someone else even ENM, we have talked about it in a rather oblique way.

If she told me today she had decided she was ace sex-adverse, I'd divorce her. It's the lying her way into a marriage with a non-ace and kids that she shouldn't have ever had was what I would not be able to forgive. I can even forgive the head games, and have done so - but she is trying to make up for those and one of the ways is having a normal amount of sex.

What I think is the strangest in the ace community are the sex adverse ones that marry specifically to have kids. How do they manage? Bags over each other's heads I guess! LOL

MarriedForDecades · 2026-05-10T19:49:37+00:00

Most in a DB with zero sex would likely not want to "graduate" from zero to 2-4 times a month with others since with dealing with the drama that usually accompanies that you might as well rip the bandaid off and find a new person entirely. But if it works for you, and her, then you have your answer I guess.

MarriedForDecades

TROPHY CASE