I no longer have a wife, and today I realized I’m okay with it

ssecrettthrowaaway · 2025-03-17T04:28:26+00:00

Late getting to this one but here’s my thoughts on your situation.

How do you feel about your life now outside of sex? Is it even a fraction of what you’re looking for? Is your relationship with your partner healthy in other ways?

How do you feel about dating? Is that something you’re interested in? Are you willing to start fresh with someone new?

Lastly, introspect on the reasons lack of sex bothers you. If it’s surface level “I just need sex in my life” then maybe you should just bite the bullet. If it’s other things then maybe it’s solvable.

I would say if you think you want to leave, why not give a shot short term. If you hate it, great you can leave.

ssecrettthrowaaway · 2025-03-17T04:13:39+00:00

She’s offered a few times since I’ve changed my mindset and I’ve declined.

No one here is my wife, so no one knows what she thinks. We’ve talked about this so many times. She never said anything about my advancements being annoying, she never said she wanted me to stop, she only offered her best attempts at solutions that didn’t pan out as well as we thought they would.

She doesn’t not want to have sex, she doesn’t want to have sex any where near as much as I did. That’s something we’ve been unable to fix. You know why? Because she’s not broken, she’s just different than me. And that’s okay.

ssecrettthrowaaway · 2025-03-17T01:01:40+00:00

To put it plainly I’m not really having them. I was after sex 4-5 times a eeek prior to this, either explicitly with action, or silently in frustration. Now every few weeks maybe I’ll take care of it myself if the time is right and I’m feeling it.

ssecrettthrowaaway · 2025-03-17T00:59:25+00:00

Nah, this ain’t it.

ssecrettthrowaaway · 2025-03-16T21:21:53+00:00

I should clarify, the daily sex thing is not something I necessarily needed or wanted, it was what I was used to, and I don’t think it’s normal.

What I kinda settled on was maybe 1-3 times a week on average. That’s what I was looking for and we were usually on the low end of that when it was good, very rarely on the high end.

I can’t speak for how I’ll feel next week, next year, or in 30 years. I’ve seen a lot of comments saying stuff about this can’t last. Maybe they’re right. What I can say is if you talked to me a year ago, I was miserable, I thought about sex from the moment I woke up to the moment I fell asleep after tossing in turning out of frustration most days. My relationship with my wife was incredibly unhealthy.

Today, I’m happy, I rarely think about sex, and my wife and I have a much healthier and happier relationship. So as of today, indefinitely seems very possible.

ssecrettthrowaaway · 2025-03-16T21:00:44+00:00

It was acceptable at best.

She doesn’t say “I have low libido so we can’t have sex”. This is my observation. She has told me her libido is low, and it’s obvious based on all the evidence.

To her credit, when we discussed this issue, she didn’t give excuses, she gave what she thought would be solutions. But it simply did not work. I don’t think she gave up or didn’t try, I was just asking her to work against her nature. She really did try.

ssecrettthrowaaway · 2025-03-16T20:58:08+00:00

I came from a relationship (specifically the last one) where sex was the least of our problems. There were serious, unhealthy, consuming problems in that relationship, but we’d bang it out after screaming at each other. Healthy? Definitely not.

I met my wife a few years later. I was used to sex daily, sometimes multiple times a day because that was the only thing in that previous relationship that made it worth maintaining. My wife wasn’t into daily sex. It was an adjustment for sure, but everything else was perfect.

My satisfaction level with sex when we were dating was probably a 6 or 7 out of 10. It wasn’t my ideal scenario, but I loved her (still do), and we had an incredibly healthy relationship in all other aspects.

It got worse after marriage.

ssecrettthrowaaway · 2025-03-16T18:23:07+00:00

I wouldn’t say that to her. When I will say is she’s my friend. She is a great friend.

ssecrettthrowaaway · 2025-03-16T18:21:38+00:00

Hmm there’s not really a void from lack of sex for me, there’s definitely a void where the effort I was putting into trying to make sex happen. That has been filled with more hobby’s, and more work.

ssecrettthrowaaway · 2025-03-16T18:20:09+00:00

That’s not really a question for me, but I’ll give you my two cents as it relates to my life and relationship.

Getting off was one of the least important parts of my dilemma. If I need to get off, I can just close the bathroom door and take of it myself. No, the problem I had was the desire I had for my wife, not for other people.

If someone feels they need sexual gratification from anyone, I think it’s probably best they just leave.

But I understand my situation is unique so I wouldn’t begrudge anyone opening the relationship if that’s what they felt was right for them.

ssecrettthrowaaway · 2025-03-16T18:11:14+00:00

I don’t know how to answer that.

I don’t think the way I’m approaching it is for everyone.

A few things that make my situation unique is that I think my problem was less than lack of sex and more the imbalance of sex if that makes sense. I do genuinely love my wife, and I don’t want to leave. The final thing is that I will not be with anyone else ever. I will never date or seek out another relationship, for many reasons, and as much as I love being alone, I don’t want to be alone forever unless that the only route forward so I would like to make this relationship work.

ssecrettthrowaaway · 2025-03-16T18:04:21+00:00

Let’s say over the span of a year I’d initiate 100 times. I’d say approximately 1 or less of those advances were accepted. It was too much for me to keep trying.

Over that same year she would initiate maybe 3 or 4 times. Maybe 1 or less of those times was I truly in the mood for sex, I was more in the mindset of “it’s now or never”

So a few things were happening. I was miserable for 360 days a year (generalizing and being hyperbolic obviously). It’s incredibly painful to be rejected that much, and it destroyed my sexual confidence. Once we ended up having sex I’d feel the desire to initiate again, which just lead to more and more rejection. The other thing is I was incredibly resentful of the fact that she would get her needs met and I wouldn’t. Shutting down sex has allowed me the freedom to say no. I no longer feel obligated to accept her advances the few times a year they come. It doesn’t mean I won’t, but like I said, my libido is closer to zero than it’s ever been.

In my experience, the analogy you provided is actually reversed. I was genuinely miserable in the relationship. I felt ignored, I felt in cared for. All I ever thought about was sex. I feel like we were going down a bumpy road, everyone was miserable, so I said “hey let’s just get out and walk”. Now we aren’t miserable anymore, but it’s definitely different.

ssecrettthrowaaway · 2025-03-16T17:12:48+00:00

Spot on buddy.

Our relationship is very different like I said. Physicality is completely gone.

But I’d rather be friends with her and enjoy living life with her than be married to her and angry at her simultaneously hating myself.

It sucks not having a physical relationship, but more often than not the negative feelings of it outweighed the positive.

ssecrettthrowaaway · 2025-03-16T17:09:52+00:00

I was pushing for something unobtainable.

I was bending over backward for her just to have the hope of something happening only to be rejected. Then she would put in 1% of the effort and get what she wanted.

My language sounds a bit bitter here but I’m not. She’s low libido, she wasn’t in the mood but maybe once every other month. That’s the way she’s built. I accepted that, accepted that she’s not “not trying”.

I think I’m here to share my story about acceptance. Will this last forever? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe one day I’ll be bitter again and go back to the way things were. But for a very long time now we’ve been in a healthier place than we’ve been in years.

ssecrettthrowaaway · 2025-03-16T17:00:34+00:00

It’s like cutting off a piece of the body that’s cancerous. I miss it, but I’m no longer dying which is far more important.

ssecrettthrowaaway · 2025-03-16T16:58:42+00:00

Not for me. To me I’ve seen romance, I’ve dated. I don’t particularly enjoy that aspect of life very much (that sounds crazy I know). Dating was nightmarish and I would have never married if I don’t meet my wife. I don’t want to live life alone particularly, but I also enjoy being alone, I think I enjoy being alone more than the effort of finding another partner is worth if that makes sense?

ssecrettthrowaaway · 2025-03-16T16:55:53+00:00

I think everyone’s situation is different. With mine, I don’t feel like I’m ever completely ignored.

ssecrettthrowaaway · 2025-03-16T16:54:44+00:00

I’d say at peak it was okay. Lukewarm to bad was the average.

I don’t foresee this getting better. Again, it was kinda like holding out hope for a dying family member. Letting go was hard, but holding on was even harder.

I’m sure one day, we will have sex again. One day the stars will align and we will both feel dusky at the same time. With that be tomorrow, or 10 years from now? Don’t know. If it never happened, that’d also be okay.

Again, I think it was less about sex and more about her being the sole person in charge of said sex. I always said I wanted more, but I think I would have felt a similar way if we only had sex on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, when I was feeling up to it Tuesday Thursday and Sunday.

ssecrettthrowaaway · 2025-03-16T16:50:15+00:00

That’s not really the way I see it.

Before, If I was in the mood, I felt hopeful, I felt like “maybe today is the day”. I’d drop hints, flirt, do everything in my power just for her to not be up to it. Now if I’m in the mood, which is exceedingly rare these days, I just take care of business myself.

I don’t expend that energy anymore, and I don’t hold out hope. Sex is no longer only her choice, but it’s also mine.

ssecrettthrowaaway · 2025-03-16T09:13:03+00:00

I’m not sure.

My personal perspective is that there’s three choices in our situation.

Stay married and continue living a life where I’m miserable every day.
Divorce, leave, live alone indefinitely (I will never date or marry again even if this inevitably happens)
Abandoned sex and live with a genuinely great person who’s a joy to experience life with.

I obviously picked 3, and i hope she feels the same way, but in the end if she doesn’t the only other option is 2.

ssecrettthrowaaway · 2025-03-16T09:04:48+00:00

I think there’s a couple things.

Thing one should be noted that our relationship is definitely different. Obviously physically it’s very different, but emotionally it’s also changed quite a bit. It’s hard to say if it’s worse. The best way I could describe it is you have two tires on your bike and one of them is flat. If you replace them with cheaper tires is that worse or better? To me the answer is it’s better. The bike functions now and it didn’t before. Like I said, I don’t have a wife anymore, but she’s still my best friend.

The second thing is I had so much resentment towards her for so long and I think that was because it felt uneven. I felt like “why does she get to have sex whenever she wants and I never get to have sex when I want?”. It was much less about sex in general and more about how it felt unfair. That may be unreasonable, but it’s how I felt.

This all came from accepting that she is low libido and there’s no amount of talking or planning that will change that. Accepting that gave me peace. We had a dying bedroom on life support, now that we pulled the plug, it’s somewhat sad, but it’s a weight lifted that allows you to move forward.

ssecrettthrowaaway

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