Now that sex has become a focal point, I’ll clarify my viewpoint. Desire discrepancy happens, and in our case may be peri-menopausal and/or stress related. I had sent her links to this topic from our diocese website. I’ve apologized for being insistent when she was not interested, but again, she won’t let it go. One aspect she really resents is my requesting sex when she would prefer to stay up late cleaning up the kitchen or other rooms in the house. It seemed as our priorities were diverging, which frustrated me as I felt the kitchen could wait and I’m O.K. with it not being spotless. To me, times for intimacy are (actually now WERE) much more limited than times for cleaning the house.
I hope you didn’t mean it quite like that. No one could stand to have a sex life, or even a total amount of “couple time” that takes up as much of their time as the time it takes to keep a house clean and do the other work of running a household. It is as if she were to complain that your job is more important than intimacy with her because you think there are times you have to go to work instead of spend time with her. That wouldn’t be fair, would it? It gives dignity to her work when you give it the same priority that you give your own.
I don’t know, but I would make a heavy bet on this: You may not have known it, but this dispute was not about the priority of cleaning the house compared to the priority of intimacy. From her point of view, I bet it was either about a) the value of her time and her plans or b) control issues in general. This second part may really come as a surprise: If she feels guilty about how she uses her time, the hidden defensiveness about it can make this even
more of a sore spot! Watch out for that minefield, if you’re dealing with someone who has issues in managing their own time. The more they worry that they don’t use it well, the more defensive they will be if you seem not to value their time, either. Why do I say this in this case? Because I know if I’m up late cleaning house, it is either becaues I am buried in too much work or else I dinked around earlier in the day when I should have been cleaning. If I’m finally on a roll at midnight, I’m going to be happy just until I’m reminded again that I would be free if I’d gotten on the stick sooner. (In defense: Late night time is usually uninterrupted time. With kids, it can come to seem very precious time for getting work done.)
At any rate, I will bet it was about whether she felt that her plans for what she was going to do with her time were important to you, or if she felt she was expected to just drop everything for whatever you happened to want. When you are the one whose time is deemed “flexible”, then trust me, that can come to seem like “less valuable”. Having your time treated like an expendible commodity is not an arousing feeling. Or she may just have used the cleaning thing as a way to exert control without being open about it.
I don’t just say this as someone with a PhD who is a SAHM. My mother felt the same way, and she and my dad both had high school educations. She found it very frustrating when she had something planned and he just waltzed up and expected her to happily drop everything for whatever it was
he had planned, and this was true even if he was proposing something more fun. Why? Because he wasn’t going to be around to do whatever it was that she was postponing. She didn’t see it as an offer to spend fun time together. She saw it as evidence that he was oblivious of the fact that she did in fact plan her time. What she wanted was for him to come to her in advance and say, “I’d like to do this; when would be a good time for you?” Then when she told him how packed her schedule was, he would have been husband-of-the-year if he had said: “Tell me what housework you have planned for tomorrow night, then, and I’ll do that and tomorrow we’ll both be free to have some fun.” (My dad and grandpa kind of did this. They would say: I’ll make the
kids do that, then you’ll be free to have some fun.
) Being willing to do a SAHMs work says that the work is both important and not beneath you. That is huge.
Seriously, though, for those out there who have this problem, I’d suggest looking for a solution that shows you put a value on her time and her attachment to plans she has already made, even more than if those plans were your own, when making joint plans for time together. That is very endearing.
