Sex advice with Suzi Godson: I love my wife, but I no longer view her as a sexual being

Q: "I love my wife but she is no longer the woman that I married. Since having children she has become a “martyr mother” and gives all her attention to the children. I no longer view her as a sexual being and do not find her attractive, but she demands sex from me. Will this feeling ever change?"

A: Martyr mothers are hard work. If you ask them how they are, they recount an exhausting list of after-school activities, domestic chores, play dates and doctors’ appointments, making it difficult not to conclude that their personal identity has been sucked into some horrible child-centric vortex.

In reality, martyr mother syndrome is a direct response to the illusion of the “mother archetype”. From the minute that a woman becomes pregnant, she is bombarded with medical, cultural and anecdotal advice about the gravity of her impending responsibility.