Hello, and welcome to the Sex Within Marriage podcast.
I'm JD from UncoveringIntimacy.com, and we help couples build intimacy that strengthens
their marriage.
I had this question come in through our anonymous question page, so I'm just going
to jump right into it.
Hello, and thank you for taking my question.
Married 17 years with two amazing girls.
I love my wife and have been with her since 20 years old, now 42.
My wife and I have sex around twice a week, and I'm always the initiator.
I have been asking for years if we could work on foreplay.
She never flirts, send texts, or anything to initiate sex with me.
Furthermore, she refuses to let me finger her or give her oral sex, which I would really
like to experience.
She also refuses to give me oral sex or try any new toys, although she can orgasm with
a vibrator, and that is the only way she is able to orgasm.
I ask to try new things, but always get, I like what we do already, or I get an emoji
with eyes rolling.
She then says, I guess I'll just never be good enough for you, or is this all you ever
think about?
I feel like I'm always the one putting in any effort, and the sex that I am given is
to shut me up or to check a box as a wifely duty.
Sex or anything sex related is always on her terms, what she wants, how she wants it.
It's not a deal breaker that we cannot enjoy these things together, but I would love to
have these opportunities as her husband.
Even more, I would like to have a good reason of why she refuses.
She just says that she does not want that, or doesn't feel good, or it's gross, or maybe
some other time.
I even ask her to do little things like come to bed without panties, or send a flirty
text, which never happens.
She would allow me to do these things when we dated, so I want her where it got into her
mind to never do them again.
I am her only sexual partner, and she is my second.
She has never had any sexual trauma that I'm aware of, or past issues that would hold her
back from exploring these types of enjoyment.
We are both clean people and take good care of ourselves, and I guess as a husband in
a loving marriage, where we have a great family and everything is pretty darn good,
I just do not understand.
I feel like I've been plenty patient over the years asking for this, but nothing ever seems
to change.
Thank you.
Okay, so in answer to that, I've said this in bits and pieces over the years, but I'm
not sure I've ever articulated the whole thing in one place before, so let's see if I can
manage it this time.
The amount you need to lead or carry a part of your relationship is directly proportional
to the relative strength of your desire for that part of your relationship compared to
your spouses.
I know that's quite a mouthful, but I'll try to break it down.
If you both have relatively high drives, then you're going to be more of an even split.
A lot of people experience this early on, there's plenty of NRE, new relationship energy, otherwise
known as infatuation, and this can be problematic because later on when it shifts, it can feel
like a bait and switch for the now higher drive spouse.
When one of you is relatively very high and the other is relatively very low or their sex
drive is close to non-existent, then the higher drive spouse is going to be initiating and
leading the sexual part of their relationship nearly 100% of the time.
That can understandably also create conflict and some negative feelings because it feels
kind of icky to be the one initiating all the time.
It can make you feel like a pest, like you're forcing your spouse to have sex with you,
like you're in imposition, or like they don't actually want to be with you, and it gets compounded
by dismissive or condescending gestures like eye rolling even in emoji form.
That said, this setup is perfectly okay if two things are true.
One is that you both understand that this is your dynamic, and the second is that the lower
drive spouse recognizes that sex is an important part of the marriage even if they don't personally
feel a drive for it.
And this is the arrangement that my wife and I have.
She has little to no drive and that's okay, I understand she's never going to be the one
to initiate, so I don't ask her whether or not she wants to have sex because if I'm asking
her to come up with a desire herself, the answer is always going to be no.
But that doesn't mean she doesn't enjoy sex once I lead it.
I've had to get over the fact that she probably isn't going to initiate regularly and when
she does, it comes out of love for me rather than her own desire.
Now honestly, that took a while to get over.
Once I did, things got much better.
Once I understood that leading is my role and she's okay with it being my role, it stopped
being a problem.
But notice what that depends on.
She doesn't turn me down.
She doesn't roll her eyes at me.
She doesn't get frustrated that I want her.
And there's one more piece, you have to get good at sex, so that the lower drive spouse genuinely
enjoys it once they're there, even if they never intrinsically look forward to it.
Because if you're initiating something that she's not going to enjoy, well, then you're
lucky she's willing to put up with that twice a week for your benefit.
Now in your case, she won't let you lead.
You have the responsibility of leading, initiating, but not the authority and those two need to
go together.
She doesn't want you to try anything, explore anything or do anything to her.
And that's a real struggle because how are you supposed to find out what makes it really
good for her if you're not allowed to explore at all?
So that's the thing I'd bring to her, not a request for a specific act, something more
like I want to make sex better for both of us.
And to do that, we need some way to explore that isn't too uncomfortable for you.
And we need to be able to talk about it afterwards so that we can work out what doesn't work.
And here's what worries me most about this question.
You don't know why she doesn't want to do these things.
However, she told you four different times, you wrote them down yourself.
He just says she doesn't want that or it doesn't feel good or it's gross or maybe some
other time.
These are four different answers.
And I think you've been hearing them as one general refusal.
And I don't think that they are.
I think they're different problems wearing the same coat and each one needs something different
from you.
So let's take it's gross because I think it's the loudest word in your whole letter.
Let's look at what you wrote a few lines later.
We are both clean people that take good care of ourselves.
You heard gross and you defended it with your hygiene and I don't think she was talking
about hygiene at all.
Gross is usually a moral word, not a sanitary one.
It's what people reach for when something feels wrong, not when something feels unclean,
although there can be overlap there.
Now I think there could be two things going on here.
The first is that women who engaged in sexual activities before marriage, even though they
enjoyed it at the time, often retroactively bucket those activities as sexually immoral
because they're attached to a premarital sex.
And the activity then gets tainted by that context.
The second is that your definition of gross changes when you're aroused because of how
our brains work.
When you were young and dating, it was both more exciting and she likely had higher levels
of testosterone, less stress, and fewer responsibilities.
And those all tend to radically affect women's arousal patterns.
For more information on that, check out the post on the dual control model.
There's a link to it in the show notes.
So in short, she's not turned on enough to be willing to do those things.
Right now, it's too gross.
If she were intoxicated with arousal, she wouldn't care.
And this we see often in affairs.
Suddenly, people will do things they previously considered off-limits, gross taboo, et cetera,
because of the excitement and the arousal of the affair.
And that really hurts their spouse.
Even more when those get reclassified again as a moral acts because of the context when
they repent and rebuild their marriage, often those acts remain off limits, which can
really cause a lot of hurt and confusion.
And I think these two things together explain why we see that for women in particular, the
more they engage in premarital sexual activities, the less their sexual satisfaction is in their
marriage.
This is correlated to both manual sex and oral sex prior to their marriage.
So now go back and read your own question again.
If you had sex before marriage with each other, you're her only partner.
And those two things she won't do now, manual and oral sex, are two of the things you were
doing back then.
And in our data, a couple who did manual oral and vaginal sex before marriage ends up with
their wife about 16% less sexually satisfied in her marriage.
And that effect doesn't show up in frequency, only in satisfaction.
In other words, they don't have less sex than other people, they just enjoy it less.
Which is what you're experiencing in your marriage, exactly.
Sex twice a week for 17 years, that is pretty much on par.
That is the average frequency is fine.
She shows up.
What's missing is specific acts and they happen to be specific acts from the years you weren't
married yet.
They also tend to be the specific acts that women say they need in order to orgasm and
enjoy sex more.
Which also answers the thing you said that you couldn't understand.
You know, you said that she will she would allow me to do these things when we dated.
So I'm unsure of where it got in her mind to never do them again.
And the answer is the wedding did.
Those acts got refiled and when the context shifted, they're not things my boyfriend and
I did anymore.
They're things that I did before I was married.
And she may well have spent the years since making peace with that by deciding it was shameful.
Now you're asking her to do this shameful thing on purpose as a wife and as the mother of
your two girls.
And that can be a hard bridge to cross for some wives.
And this premarital context doesn't tend to affect men in the same way.
I think that's why you wrote, I just don't understand.
You are both remembering the same past and you remember it as good.
But there's a fair chance that she remembers it as what you did before she knew better.
And every time you ask to do it again, you're asking her to go back to that context.
And she's likely not consciously aware of this.
She's not intentionally stonewalling you.
She's answering you in the one word that she's got.
I'd also flag one more possibility on the it doesn't feel good because it might be the
plainest one.
You said she can only orgasm with a vibrator.
We've had that conversation on our forum plenty of times and it often goes like this.
From one husband, she used to orgasm with oral only in the beginning and it wasn't often.
Then over time, we got a good vibrator and she always orgasms with it.
But it has been impossible to orgasm otherwise.
And if that's what happened to you two, then it doesn't feel good, isn't a guilt and isn't
a dodge.
It's a status report.
And lying there while your husband works away at something that isn't going anywhere knowing
he's waiting on a result you can't produce isn't pleasant, it's awkward and anyone would
start avoiding it.
But you're right that you don't know and that tells me you two aren't having discussions
about it, which means that you can't communicate about it productively.
And that's the actual problem because if you can't talk about a problem in your marriage,
then you can't solve the problem in your marriage.
And this is true far more than people expect.
Most of the time when someone tells me they have a problem with sex, the problem isn't
sex.
The problem is that they can't have a conversation about sex.
This is a communications issue and a trust issue and an attitude issue, not usually a sex
issue.
All right, let's move on to the I guess I'll just never be good enough for you because mixed
in with all of this is that line.
And I want to spend a minute on it because I don't think it means what you think it
means.
My wife used to say this too.
And I wrote a whole thread about this in our forum back in 2020 because it kept coming
up in the becoming more sexually engaged course that I teach for wise in their discussions.
And here's what I wrote.
This is an extremely common feeling.
My wife feels the same way often.
We've had lots of discussions about it on her side.
She feels like she can't wrap her head around how I can be content, which I am, and yet
still want more.
And that's the piece I'd hand you that she can't make, I'm happy with her sex life.
And I would like to try new things fit in the same head at the same time.
Now, I don't know if you're like me that you're both content and curious, but that's where
a lot of husbands end up in the, if the marriage is healthy to her, there are contradiction.
And the only way to resolve a contradiction is decide one of them is a lie.
So she concludes that the contentment is the lie, which means every time you ask for something
new, she isn't hearing curiosity.
She's hearing a verdict that you're not enough and I've been pretending to say that you are.
And you've been asking for 17 years, she's been hearing 17 years of this verdict.
And underneath that is something bigger, which is the fear of risking the mediocrity that
you already have for something that might be really good, but might go really bad.
Because what if things change?
What if it's harder?
What if you have to have difficult conversations and you don't handle them well?
That's usually not just a sex problem.
That's typically a whole life problem.
And that's what I spend a lot of my time on with coaching clients is how do we have these
hard conversations?
How do we shift the attitude to I want more of this?
And how do we make that shift feel possible so that it doesn't feel so risky?
Because there's a good chance that your wife doesn't want to talk about this or explore it
because the last time she did, it wasn't safe.
And that might mean she tried something and you pushed further than she was willing to
go.
It might mean that she tried to share how she felt about something and you took it badly
or shut it down or it might be family of origin stuff where she was taught a bad attitude
about sex that she's carried forward into your marriage.
All right, moving on.
I want to talk about the eye rolling, even if it was in emoji form because I've been hard
on this before and I want to be careful.
I've listed eye rolling as one of those red flags that a marriage is drifting towards divorce.
And I still stand by that.
It sends a very clear message that his desire to connect is so unimportant to her that it
gets the same treatment as a lame joke.
And in your situation, though, her eye rolling doesn't seem to be dismissive but rather full
of self doubt, contempt doesn't come with self doubt, your wife rolls her eyes.
And then she says, I guess I'll just never be good enough for you.
And who genuinely thinks you're beneath her doesn't also lie awake worrying that she's
failing you.
They can't both be sincere.
So read the eye roll through that context.
It's a shield, not a sneer.
And that doesn't make it harmless.
It still lands on you exactly like contempt does, which is precisely why it's on that red
flag list that is probably a good part of why this has been eating at you for 17 years.
But it changes what you do about it.
You don't confront contempt.
You tell her that the what the gesture does, because there's a very good chance that she
has no idea she's doing it.
Of everything in this post, that's the easiest conversation to have and the one I'd have first.
That doesn't mean it's an easy conversation.
It's just easier than the other ones.
And lastly, let's talk about sacred cows.
Whatever the reason, if you can't talk about it, you can't fix it.
That's the real problem here.
The rest is context, but this is the issue, not the oral sex, not the toys.
That you can't have a productive conversation about any of it.
And here's the detail in your letter that proves it, the one that I think you kind of glossed
right over.
I even asked her to do little things like come to bed without panties or send a flirty
text, which never happens.
And stop and think about that.
Why would anyone refuse to send a text?
It costs nothing.
There's no hygiene concern, no pain, no exposure, no theology.
If her problem were oral sex specifically or her body specifically, a flirty text would
be free.
But it isn't free.
And that tells you that the fence isn't around the axe at all.
It's around the topic.
She's not protecting oral sex.
She's protecting a whole territory and everything that points at that territory right down to
a text message gets refused on principle.
So you need to have an open conversation about the fact that you don't feel allowed to have
the conversation, that there are sacred cows in your marriage that you're not allowed
to touch, not allowed to challenge, not allowed to question, not allowed to discuss, or you
even try to improve because they're simply off limits.
And that shouldn't be a valid stance in a loving marriage.
Now if you are a wife or a husband reading this and feeling defensive on her behalf or
on your own, I get it.
So let me say a few things directly to you.
None of this is designed to tell you that you're inadequate.
It isn't a scorecard.
It isn't a list of things you're supposed to be doing.
If your spouse asks for something new, they're not filing a complaint about you.
They're doing the one thing that the data says actually matters, which is being honest
about what they want.
The alternative version, the one where nothing is ever said and resentment quietly builds
for a decade, is far worse, and I've watched it play out many, many times.
And a wife on our forum said it better than I ever have.
She wrote, this concept is challenging for me.
I think it's because it feels like things may never be enough for my husband.
He's just always going to want more and more and different and different and edgier and
edgier until there's no moral way for me to satisfy him.
It's not the I feel inadequate to fulfill this request.
If I say yes to this, there will be another ask and another and it never stops and eventually
it will lead somewhere I can't go.
That's the inadequacy they're feeling, that potential future where they can't go any further.
And if that's what you believe, then holding the line right where it is isn't stubbornness.
It's the only rational move that you've got.
Any movement proves the line moves.
So I'd offer two things.
First from another wife in the same conversation who felt exactly that and then went and found
out.
She wrote, I totally felt that way myself when I decided to stop being a gatekeeper.
I used to say he's just never satisfied.
And that is sort of true.
He wants sex a lot.
But now that we've been having regular sex and I have not been denying him and even initiating
and engaging, we've come to a rhythm or we're finding it still.
And it's not increasing more and more.
It's not getting more and more edgy.
And the escalation she was bracing for didn't happen.
It settled into a rhythm.
The second is if you, if that fear is real for you, then say it out loud, not I like
what we do already.
Say I'm afraid this never stops.
That's the sentence your spouse can actually respond to.
They can tell you where the ceiling is.
And they can't do that if the only thing they ever hear is just a no.
If you don't share your fears, then they can't comfort you about them.
So where does that leave you?
You ultimately can't force someone to grow.
If she really doesn't want to, if she genuinely wants to stay stuck here, then yeah, you're stuck.
There isn't anything you can do about that.
You took a vow to love her no matter what.
And this is one of those no matter what's.
And sometimes the only option left is prayer.
And I don't mean to say that prayer is only a last resort, but rather that all of this
should be covered in prayer.
And sometimes there isn't another step that you can take in that moment.
That's the only one you can do.
Now if this conversation has become hostile in your marriage, then pray about it alone because
or else you risk your shared prayer time feeling like a manipulation tactic.
If you're praying with your spouse and saying something like, God, please soften the heart
of my wife who is depriving her spouse against your word or something like that, that is not
going to go well.
Do not do that.
If the conversation is more open and feels like an impasse that you both would like to
move forward on, then pray about it together and ask God to show you a way forward.
Because if your wife is open to growing, open to changing, opening, open to exploring with
you and you're willing to do it in a way that's comfortable for her or at least not
unduly uncomfortable because all growth is a bit uncomfortable, then there's a lot of
room here.
You've got 17 good years, two kids and a marriage you describe as pretty darn good.
That's not a small foundation.
Most of what's broken here is a conversation and conversations can be learned.
And if you want help with that specifically book a discovery call, there's a link in
the show notes.
You can walk you both through the discussion, help you build better attitudes, better conversations,
better communication and teach you how to handle that conflict when it comes up.
Then you can work together to make your marriage amazing for both of you because I'm willing
to bet that there are things she wishes she could change in the marriage to that also
feel like sacred cows that can't be touched from her perspective.
And for everyone else, I'm curious, how would you answer this question?
I'd love to know what you think.
Head over to the blog.
There's a link in the show notes.
I'd love to know what you think about it and maybe the original poster will come and read
your thoughts if you have ideas that I didn't, either that support or contradict my stance.
The floor is yours.
And that is it for today.
We'll talk to you next time.