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Ask Tokii

Well, as you consider your feelings about her now, there’s a fairly good chance that your wife may feel this way about you too or has at some point in your relationship. I once met woman who told me that she’d been married and divorced 30 times! I was shocked and then she laughed and said that she’d “emotionally” married and divorced her husband over 30 times in the course of 40 years together!

This really stuck with me because it reflects the reality of sharing a lifetime with someone. Her point was that we can’t always expect to be “in love” with our partner for the rest of our lives in the same way we were at the start of the relationship. The bigger question for you is why does she no longer arouse you? Has something changed in her physical appearance or your intimacy interests? With your busy lives has sex become routine?

People change over time – their interests, bodies, and needs. It’s important to set aside some couple time where you two can remember why you got together in the first place and so you can experience how you both are evolving and changing. Shared activities like cooking, taking walks, exercising, or trying a new hobby together can help. Get creative.

If you are dissatisfied with your sex life, then my advice is to do something about it! Write her an erotic tale, give her a massage, or introduce a new sex toy. If she’s uncomfortable with traditional porn, then get her some female porn, which primarily focuses on a handsome guy worshipping a woman and treating her like a sex goddess. I have it on good authority that treating women like a sex goddess does help to you in the bedroom!

I agree with Karla that it’s important to take an active role in your intimate connection with each other. You may want to spend some time digging a little deeper in order to understand if there is something else going on or if the experience is “normal” when spending a lifetime together.

When you two first met it was likely amazing. You both did impulsive things, felt preoccupied with each other, and sex was probably daring and exciting. What you both experienced is a kind of “love cocktail” of hormones that contribute to taking risks, seeking adventure, and seeing each other through “rose-colored glasses.” Over time – from six months to two years or so – hormones levels return to their pre-relationship state, and this is when we really “see” our partners for who they are. The bonding that happens during the “love cocktail” phase helps you form an attachment that can get you through the rough spots that naturally occur in any relationship. If these “feel good” reserves, that help us through those rough spots don’t get refilled at regular intervals through intimate experiences like sex, the reserves can go dry and couples end up feeling like you do.

When in the child-rearing stage of a relationship, so much energy is chewed up in the operations and logistics of life. Not everyone is lucky enough to have hired help or extended family to assist during this time, and so the lion’s share of the effort falls on the couple. It gets more complicated when you both work outside of the home. All of your respective energy goes into caring and feeding the kids, managing the home, paying bills, and pursuing careers. When one adds up the time it takes to do a half decent job at all of these things, most of the 24-hour clock is gone. The bad news is this leaves very little emotional energy for sex, which is essential for keeping those “feel good” reserves up.

What’s not healthy for the relationship is to just continue to focus on the negative, because it only compounds the problem and can put you at risk of seeking satisfaction outside your relationship. Instead of focusing on not feeling aroused now, consider when you did feel aroused by her. What was the situation? Where were you? What was the most recent time? What is different now? Please also consider her, is she feeling the lull in your sex life too? Have you two discussed this? Sometimes just verbalizing concerns and fears can clear your head and give a reality check as well as allow you to check in with your partner.

1.  Relationships need care and feeding
2. Get creative with your intimate connection
3. Understand what stage you’re in and what is “normal”

Where you both are in your relationship makes it’s crucial to strategize your couple time with focus and intention. This means date nights, surprises, and couple focused communication like texts, emails, and calls. You didn’t reach this place overnight so don’t expect it to be addressed or resolved quickly. Long-term relationships have great benefits because of the trust and understanding built through shared events and activities, but it doesn’t just happen. Just like anything worth having it will take intention, focus, patience, and understanding.

Karla Stephens – Tolstoy
Alison Sigmon

Try playing Love and Marriage and Parenting and Our Marriage to explore needs and get ideas for how to feed that intimate connection. Incorporating some of what used to work for you can help, because that sits at the roots of what drew to each other.