Sex File: She only wants quickies with me 

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My wife and I are childfree, financially secure and life should be great. The problem is that she shows absolutely no interest in intimacy any more — only quickies at best. I love her to bits. I couldn’t countenance having sex with anyone else, but the thought is increasingly crossing my mind. What should I do?

 You say that you love your beautiful wife to bits, yet you are increasingly considering finding another sexual partner. I only hope that you have not dropped that threat of infidelity on your wife because if your genuine aim is to restore intimacy, badgering and blackmail are about the worst possible tactics to employ. I suspect that sex has become the focus of your dissatisfaction, but it’s not what this is about at all. Any relationship counsellor will tell you that sexlessness rarely has anything to do with sex. Instead, it is almost always a sign that there are unresolved issues in the relationship.

Withholding sex in a marriage is often one partner’s attempt to tell the other that something is wrong. Your wife may be feeling angry, depressed or emotionally disconnected. She may be bored of having quickie sex that she doesn’t want, with a man who is more interested in his satisfaction than her emotional wellbeing. Withholding sex is, admittedly, not a brilliant form of communication, but more often than not what the person who is doing it really wants is comfort, affection and understanding. When what they get is threats of infidelity, they retreat even further.

I understand that her lack of interest in intimacy has an emotional impact on you. Sex is a measure of affection, so people interpret sexual disinterest as an absence of affection. This provokes a confusion of emotions that career between neediness and aggression, but the more you try to persuade someone to have sex with you to confirm that they still care, the more likely they are to recoil from you. Withholding sex can also be a form of inverted control. By refusing to give you what you want, she holds you in her orbit — although not indefinitely, as you point out.

You need to change tack and ask your wife what she really wants. Brace yourself for an answer that you are not expecting. It is possible for two people to have entirely different perspectives on the viability of a marriage, so that wedge you mention in your longer letter may be much bigger than you realise.

If things turn out to be worse than you anticipated, and you realise that what you really want is not more sex but a better relationship with your wife, you will need professional help. Sadly, unhappy couples wait an average of six years before getting help, by which time marriage guidance is often a substitute for divorce counselling. It is never a magic bullet, but if you are both committed to the process, then exploring, acknowledging and addressing the real issues in your relationship almost always opens the sexual floodgates too. 

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