Nonexistent sex drive

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How did her mother not notice her child’s arm was broken? A broken arm does not have full mobility and I would think any parent paying even the remotest attention would notice something was wrong. Was she raised in a house of neglect? What is her relationship with her parents now? All of this is pointing in the direction of serious abuse, imho. She may view sex as another means in which she has to relinquish control, perhaps a feeling she often had as a small child when adults were in control of what happened to her.
 
Hey now, don’t jump to conclusions about abuse. I agree it is certainly worth looking into, but let’s not accuse her parents of abuse without knowing anything except some incident about an unreported broken arm.

A broken arm really only hurts for a day or two, and after the initial pain, it is nothing compared to a sprain in my experience.

I once went for weeks without telling my parents about an ear infection. Thankfully I suffered no permanent damage, and it did end up going away on its own. Why didn’t I tell them? I was feeling guilty because I knew it cost money to go to the doctor and to buy the antibiotics, and it was my second ear infection in a few months.
 
This is a sad and difficult situation. I will pray for you.
 
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Princess_Abby:
How did her mother not notice her child’s arm was broken? A broken arm does not have full mobility and I would think any parent paying even the remotest attention would notice something was wrong. Was she raised in a house of neglect? What is her relationship with her parents now? All of this is pointing in the direction of serious abuse, imho. She may view sex as another means in which she has to relinquish control, perhaps a feeling she often had as a small child when adults were in control of what happened to her.
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I was thinking the same thing - how does a child hide a broken arm from a parent for three days? This could explain a great deal of why she doesn’t want to become intimate with you…there is a need for control over something, and this could be a way of exerting it without her even knowing it.
 
You don’t have to answer this on here, but just some things to think about…

Does she allow you to see her with no clothes on? As in, when she is showering or getting dressed?

If not, could there be a chance she has some physical deformity she is hiding from you, or some reason she doesn’t want to reveal her more intimate parts?

I am sure you have tried talking to her, but my best advice would be to talk again… and ask her straight up, what is bothering you? Can we see a priest or a therapist about this please? Something like that.
 
I think you have received some excellent comments.

My gut feeling is FEAR of PREGNANCY. You say she’s in grad school, etc. she could be really stressed out. Have either of you mentioned the “need” to not get pregnant soon. Have YOU mentioned a fear of pregnancy in the past?

I know from personal experience that the fear of pregnancy will drive your sex drive right to the ground.

Most of all…why don’t you just sit her down and say…“Honey, what’s going on? I love you and I need to know what’s going on so that I can help.” That’s going to be you best bet right now. You really can’t go any further until you know for sure.

Good luck and God bless you!
 
DJgang said:
“Honey, what’s going on? I love you and I need to know what’s going on so that I can help.” That’s going to be your best bet right now. You really can’t go any further until you know for sure.

Good luck and God bless you!
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I totally agree! She HAS to deal with this, and there’s not better time than the present.
 
Forget about getting decent answers on the internet.

Take a deep breath, swallow your own pride, perk up your courage and tell her that 16 months is FAR too long, and is NOT healthy or normal in a marriage. Don’t accept sex at that moment, she’d be doing it from pressure. Say the above and use it as the reason that you are INSISTING that the two of you get some couples counseling from somebody qualified to do so. And I do mean insist.

At 16 months, this is too much to work out by yourselves. This needs some trained help.

God bless you and have mercy on you.
 
John,
I’m not an expert, and I don’t know what the problem is. All I can tell you is that many, many women suffer from it.
I will let you know about what I think is the greatest invention in family planning history. It’s called BabyComp (or Lady Comp, if you don’t want to plan a baby, just want to know when she’s ovulating so you can abstain. BabyComp is a bit more expensive, but it has a few bells and whistles that Lady Comp does not.) It’s a few hundred bucks, but it’s practically foolproof. I know exactly when I’m ovulating, what days are best to conceive a boy or girl, and it show me a possible pregancy about 4 days after a possible conception.
Compared to the costs of the Pill, which are financial, emotional, medical, and most importantly, moral, it’s unbelievably cheap.
All I have to do is listen for the alarm in the AM, and then take my temp with the attached thermometer. That’s IT! The machine does the rest. Amazing.
I don’t work for Ladycomp nor do I know anyone who does. But I have never been happier with ANY purchase. If I get confused or have a simple question, tech support is just a phone call away. If I am having difficulty conceiving, I can send in my machine and they will do a medical printout which I can take to my doctor to discuss possible causes. My machine will show if I have a lueteum deficiency, which can cause infertililty.
It really is wonderful,and it takes the guesswork out of NFP.
You can visit their website at www.babycomp.com
Just something to consider, John.
I’m praying for you. You sound like an amazing husband.
 
On broken arms and not telling – in 1st grade had a call from the school, DS fell off the monkey bars and had a pretty big bruise. School nurse said arm looked fine, DS said it did not really hurt. I gave him Tylenol and he played all evening, slept well. Next morning, arm was hurting and had a bit of swelling. We went to the doc. He had a compression fracture of this wrist. Yes, technically his “arm was broken”, but, it was not a compound fracture with the arm hanging at strange angles. It was easy to miss without an x-ray.

Fast forward to 7th grade. DS is riding a skateboard, he falls on his arm –it hurts but he gets back up and keeps riding. Spends the night at a friends house – the next morning says his arm really hurts, so, we go to the ER and sure enough, the same wrist has a hairline fracture.

So, my son had the same injury twice – it hurt, and he kept on playing both times. When he grows up, he could say he broke his arm and did not mention it to mom until the next day – it sounds much worse than what actually happened…

Back to your regularly scheduled discussion…
 
Not all broken arms are obvious, as kage_ar has mentioned. I broke my arm once and didn’t realize it for two weeks. I thought I just landed on it “wrong.” My brother fell out of a tree as a teenager and broke his shoulder and didn’t even know it for a few days (when the soreness didn’t go away). My SIL hurt her leg in soccer, and you guessed it, it turned out to be broken (and she became another person to break a bone without seeking immediate medical care). And one more–my dad suffered a horrific break (bone looked like smashed corn flakes, according to the surgeon). And you know what he said when that happened? “Ouch, I think I dislocated my knee!” No kidding! So a broken arm that goes unnoticed for three days in one’s childhood is not in itself outrageous and indicative of abuse. Just my two little cents 🙂

Also, if it happened while she was playing on something dangerous that her parents told her not to, she would be reluctant to tell them “Yeah, I did what you told me not to, and I hurt my arm.”

John, not to trivialize any underlying issues with your wife, but what about this approach: Tell her that you’ve been married for 16 months and are very much in love with her. You know that consummating the relationship is really awkward, especially since you are so far into your married life and still virgins. Tell her you want the first time to be really, really special and that you have booked a weekend getaway at some nice place where you can go on your second honeymoon and consummate the marriage. Tell her that you want to give every part of your life to her, including your sexuality. And see what she says. See if she’d be open to it, and if not, maybe she’d be open to counseling. It could be a way to gain more insights, or she may even feel relieved about it. Just a thought! If you portray it as something awkward for both of you to get help with and not as “her problem” she may not be so defensive. Who knows?
 
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manualman:
Forget about getting decent answers on the internet.
At 16 months, this is too much to work out by yourselves. This needs some trained help.

God bless you and have mercy on you.
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In order to get her to counseling, he has to convince her that there is a problem, or at least that HE has a problem and THEY need to go together.

I don’t think anyone here thinks the problem is just going to disappear.
 
John, there is definitely more to this than meets the eye. There are two possibilites: she is lying to you about something, or she is physically or mentally ill. if she is not really a lesbian in denial or is not hiding a past history of sexual assault or abuse, it is highly likely that she has a mental disorder and needs help.Getting some pastoral advice is fine, but you also need to stick up for yourself and demand that she see a psychologist/social worker about this. Aside from any religious questions, this is a hardcore serious sign of mental trouble. I’m guessing there are A LOT of other red flags in your wife’s behavior that you aren’t noticing but that a professional would see right away.
 
Yeah…my guess is a mental disorder maybe linked to some kind of self-consciousness about her body…maybe she doesn’t feel attractive and thus doesn’t feel “sexy”…who knows…whatever it is you need to get to the bottom of it with professional help
 
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manualman:
Forget about getting decent answers on the internet.

Take a deep breath, swallow your own pride, perk up your courage and tell her that 16 months is FAR too long, and is NOT healthy or normal in a marriage. Don’t accept sex at that moment, she’d be doing it from pressure. Say the above and use it as the reason that you are INSISTING that the two of you get some couples counseling from somebody qualified to do so. And I do mean insist.

At 16 months, this is too much to work out by yourselves. This needs some trained help.

God bless you and have mercy on you.
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I couldn’t resist this. You said to forget about getting decent answers on the internet, then proceeded to give one! Just thought it was funny. Not picking on you. 😃
 
And I feel like if she where to “give in” and have sex after one of our talks it would just be to shut me up and I don’t know if it would be something I could do if I did not feel like it was something she wanted. I am frustrated.
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This may seem barbaric, but I wouldn’t be too concerned about her “giving in” because you are insisting or putting pressure on her.

G.K. Chesterton said that “Anything that is worth doing is worth doing poorly”. And sex within a marriage is worth doing. Insisting is not the best way, in fact it may even be a poor way, but sex is worth doing anyway.

Once you establish the fact that as a couple you will fulfill your obligations towards each other - you can spend the rest of your life improving “how” you accomplish it.

A terrible thing in this perfectionist culture is the thinking that if it can’t be done perfectly we shouldn’t do something at all.
 
I have just read of a book that might help with sexual enjoyment. It is called “a celebration of sex” by Douglas Rosenau. I found out about it on this site: christianitytoday.com/marriage/
Black Jaque:
G.K. Chesterton said that “Anything that is worth doing is worth doing poorly”.
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Interesting quote. I am not sure it is widely applicable. Can you reference it for me? I have ingrained in my mind my father at his gentlest saying to me to me that one’s work should be done carefully and precisely as the stars run their course in the sky. It is a saying in Hungarian and it sounds much more poetic “Dolgozni csak szepen es pontosan szabad mint a csillag jar az egen”

I always felt this statement was from God. He is the master of precision.

BUT I do agree that sex should just be done. Women usually come to a sexual maturity much later than men. I heard that the peak of sexual enjoyment comes around 35 for women. It is a little unfortunate that the peak for men comes much earlier, but we can always blame Adam and Eve for these imperfections in life.

The important thing is to make the effort to have sex and then hopefully the time will come when it is enjoyed more by the woman. I think it is good to be able to provide our husbands with such pleasure. Heck it takes less time and effort than cleaning the whole house or cooking a big meal. (I hope the joking tone of this is recogniseable)
 
A young man went to a Rabbi and asked, “How can I love God with my whole heart, since I see that there are bad parts in my heart?” The Rabbi replied, “Well, it seems you will have to love God with the bad parts too!” Anything that is worth doing is worth doing well, the saying goes. But G.K. Chesterton amended it. Anything that is worth doing is worth doing even badly, he said! Do you refuse to sing until you are as good as Pavarotti? Do you refuse to dance until you are another Nijinsky? How did we learn to walk? By walking badly, by toddling, by falling down innumerable times. How did we learn to write our names? How do we learn to love? To procrastinate is to learn nothing and to do nothing
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I found the above quote at the below site:
64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:4uV1p5ZUNt0J:www.goodnews.ie/jacobswelljuly2005.htm+%2B%22g+k+chesterton%22+%2B%22anything+that+is+worth+doing%22&hl=en

I just Googled “GK Chesterton” and “Anything worth doing” and got numerous sites that attribute this to him. This one in particular elaborates very well what Chesterton meant by the quote. And I believe it also is very applicable to the thread at hand.

I thought over this thread a bit last evening. I concluded that there is a BIG difference between pressuring and coercing. When it comes to doing something that is objectively good, we would find it perfectly acceptable to pressure a spouse into doing it. No one would think twice if a wife pressured her husband into going to see the doctor. So why would it be a bad thing for a husband to pressure his wife into having sex?
 
carol marie said:
16 months? You qualify for sainthood. If she is smart enough for grad school… she is smart enough to know that this is soooooo not the way a marrage is supposed to work. I say sit her down & say enough is enough… she needs to lay it all out… tell you what she is afraid of… why she won’t have sex with you. and if she doesn’t know or isn’t willing to talk about it, you both should seek the advice of a Christian counselor.
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I agree with most of this.

I know this sounds silly but so you think it could be habit? There have been times due to sickness or whatever reasons, that have cause a prolonged absence of “relations” and I guess it had become “normal” to me. I just didn’t pay attention, as I was finding other things, especially the kiddos, to keep me busy. But I must admit that I would really miss that intimacy with my DH and I am a little upset with your wife for depriving you of that amazing gift.

I am concerned that this marriage wasn’t consumated but as the husband I think you have the “authority” to sit your wife down and find out what is going on.

I don’t know a whole bunch on the subject but you and your wife are in my prayers.
 
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