It’s incredibly frustrating when your wife rejects you sexually. It’s a major ego bust. You may have thoughts like, “Am I not man enough? Am I not virile enough? Am I not good enough? What’s the matter? Why don’t you want to make love to me?” Also, some physical things happened to you because you need to make love. We are made in such a way that making love with our spouses is good for our health, and certain things occur to us if we’re experiencing a sexless marriage.
You may have noticed with yourself or other men that they tend to get irritable if they go very long without sex. It’s not just because they want to have sex. It’s because their body needs that. There are so many reasons we want to make love to our wives, and if she’s rejecting you, it’s a matter of how we can fix this. You would never want to force your wife to have sex with you, but there are ways to fix it.
Perhaps the best thing to do is to try to understand what may be going on.
For example, look at general factors such as age.
How old is she? If she’s about to go into menopause, it may be that she becomes more sexually active. Many women just before menopause will do that. They have hormones that increase, and they want to make love more than they did before.
If she’s going through menopause, then some of the difficulties she’ll be having will make her not want to make love to you. After menopause, some women lose a lot of their libido because they’re no longer fertile. Understand, however, that some women put part of their ego into that. “Part of my value, part of my worth, is that I can make babies.” That’s not true of every woman, but it’s true of many women. After they can no longer make a baby, they begin to lose their sex drive. So it could have to do with her age.
It could have to do with their health.
For example, men or women who are obese have diminished libido. If she’s got arthritis is causing her all kinds of pain. If she’s got endometriosis, she may be afraid of being hurt. Or maybe because she has something excruciating—vaginismus, which we’re not going into great detail about. Let’s just say that you won’t even be able to penetrate her if she has that going on.
So, we have to look at health factors. Is there something going on here physically that we need to see a physician about to make sure that we can take care of this? Is it something that you need to understand is occurring, and with a bit of time, get past it?
When I did a survey several years ago asking women, is there anything that had reduced the sexual attraction you have for your spouse? One-third of the thousands of women who took that survey gave at least one reason that their sexual attraction to their husbands has been dramatically reduced. One of those reasons had to do with external stresses.
It could be difficulty with finances, problems going on in the world, or parents as they get older. All those things can affect her, which have nothing to do with you directly. Although, you could potentially be exacerbating it or making it worse if you’re not trying to understand what’s going on. So fatigue, age, all those kinds of things could be general factors driving her not to want to make love. If that’s the case, try your best to understand it.
As you understand it, be very encouraging, very helpful to her. Help her get the rest that she needs. If she needs to see a physician, gently encourage her until she does. If she needs to lose weight, don’t chastise her, don’t push her. Maybe start a challenge where you both lose weight. In other words, you can help her with these general factors, as long as you don’t make it a thing that makes her feel she’s being rejected by you, that you are on her side of the table, that you are encouraging and willing to help her.
Another thing to consider is, when did this start?
Has she rejected you sexually throughout your marriage? If that’s the case, some issues may need some sex therapy. If from the beginning she made love begrudgingly and hasn’t enjoyed it, there’s probably something either physiological, or psychological, or emotional going on that needs to be dealt with.
Maybe something from when she was a teenager or a child. If it has always been like this without pushing, because that won’t work, encourage her as best you can to see somebody who can help her with those issues. Sex therapists, not a marriage counselor, can help you with these sex issues if it’s possible. If there was a time in your life when you made love with each other, things were good, but it seemed to stop, what happened? Was she close to someone that died? Did she lose a job that was very important to her? Did one of your children get sick and go through a significant crisis?
Sometimes you can look back and find the genesis point, where it started. If we can understand when this rejection began to occur, then it may not be about you. If you can find out what it is, this factor, this thing that happened, then it gives you a way to figure out where to start to fix your marriage.
Women and men both want to feel loved, liked, and respected by their spouses.
There’s ample research indicating that people who feel unloved, disliked, and disrespected typically want out of a relationship. So you need to demonstrate it. Does she feel that in the way that you treat her? If she feels disrespected in the things you say or how you act, she’s not going to want to get in bed with you. She’s not going to enjoy lovemaking with you because most of the time, it’s all about the relationship for women. It’s about love.
It’s about feeling that you love her, that you like her, that you respect her. Because of that close, emotional connection you have, when you make love, she enjoys it because she feels this union with you. You’re becoming one if you will.
Look at the relationship. If your wife feels that you want to have sex with her to get relief, but there’s little kissing, little touching, little hugging, that won’t be good. Because she’s going to feel you’re using her rather than that you love her. If your relationship has significant problems going on, you need to do whatever it takes to fix it. Because in the research I mentioned, the number one reason women gave about why they didn’t want to make love to their husbands anymore was that the relationship was terrible.
They responded with phrases like, “I don’t like being around him anymore. How would I want to be in bed with him? Why would I want to be in bed with him?” So, if that relationship is bad and you want to have actual lovemaking, you need to get the help you need to fix that relationship.
There’s also the factor of lovemaking itself, and a significant factor has to do with your body.
If you’re not taking care of your body, your wife may not want to make love to you.
Under the physical reasons that I found in my research as to why a wife did not want to make love to her husband, believe it or not, had to do with hygiene. “He doesn’t bathe as he should; he smells bad. On occasion, he passes gas right in front of me and thinks somehow that’s funny. And that I should want to hop in bed with him after that. He belches all the time. I want him to be, in essence, my Prince Charming in the sense that he’s nice, has charisma, washes, dresses in clean clothes, and that he shaves.”
You need to be as fit and trim as you can at your age and situation in life, and you need to take care of your body. This means that if you’re smoking and that’s something she finds offensive, then smoke outside. After you smoke a cigar, drop your clothes off in the laundry room on the way in and get yourself a bath because hygiene was the number one physical reason.
Another one that tends to hurt the ego of a lot of men is, “I don’t think he’s a very good lover.”
Believe it or not, a lot of guys think they are just because of the fact, well, how simple can it be? You put part A into part B, and that’s how it works, but that’s not the case at all. Lovemaking, if it were just putting part A into part B, could last a relatively short period. If she were lubricated enough, and if he had a strong enough erection, he could go into her. If he had his orgasm and ejaculated within three minutes, that’s all they would need. While he might have some sexual fulfillment in that, in the sense that he has had an orgasm, there’s no relational fulfillment in that.
There’s a built-in difficulty here if you will. Men can be aroused quickly. Women, on the other hand, tend to be aroused much more slowly. Sometimes men are way too rushed in the lovemaking process, not taking time to do the foreplay they need to do to make sure that the wife becomes aroused and ready for sex.
Let me tell you about something that we did a few years ago that I think can help you. We made seven half hours of videos broken into twelve different sessions, teaching a couple how to have a much better sex life. In it, I speak a bit, and we have actor couples talk out various scenarios. There’s no pornography in this, but discussion on situations I’ve dealt with over the years. In addition, there are several PDFs in there. For example, there’s one about how to measure your inhibitions. If your wife goes through it with you, she’ll be measuring to see if she has any sexual inhibitions as well.
There’s another one about sexual compatibility. There’s another one that addresses whether you are talking about doing something sexually you haven’t done before. It will allow you to assess whether or not each of you probably would like it or if it’s something you probably shouldn’t do because it’s more likely to cause problems.
If you’re going to fix your sex life with your wife, you need to determine why she may be rejecting you sexually. There may be timing things that occurred and some situation that needs dealing with, and you need to find some help to deal with that. If the relationship is bad, you’re going to have to make it good, and we can help you do that. We’re happy to help you do that.
If you work through it together, husband and wife, you should enhance your sex life dramatically. It’s not just about sex in the context of teaching you sex. We also teach some things about relationship sex that are crucial to understanding.
I’m sorry that things are as they are. We would love to help you fix it if you give us a chance. You can speak with one of us by calling our office at (866) 903-0990 or filling out the form on this page.
Check out the YouTube video on this topic here!
