Parenting Interferes With Sex Life

My wife and I have been fighting all night about sex. She wants me to get her more in the mood. I work all the time so it's very hard for me to do that and have sex, but I feel as if she's never in the mood. She never tries to have sex with me except maybe once a week and it's always when I get off work. When we first got together we had sex all the time. Then our daughter was born. I didn't think it would change anything since were both very sexual, but her sex drive seemed to stop and mine seemed to sky rocket. What should we do?

Perhaps you ought to try being a little more understanding of your wife rather than thinking only of your own needs. After as woman has a baby, lots of things change. Her body changes, her hormones, her mental attitude changes. Giving birth takes a lot out of a woman; it is called "labor" for a reason. Having a regular job is a lot easier than tending to the needs of a child 24/7. She is alert all through the night for the sounds of her child. He snores through the night. Learning to be a good lover is more than just being sexual. It is about creating an empathic connection with your partner. Being a good lover is more about what goes on between the partners emotionally than it is about what goes on between your legs. If you want your wife to be more sexually responsive to you, you might want to try to be more emotionally responsive to her. As partners grow together, sexual activity becomes more like slow-dancing than doing acrobatics and trying to get off. It is more about connecting than it is about climax. You might also try to make romance a priority rather than relegating sexuality to the thing you do before going to sleep. By then, both of you are tired.

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My husband and I are both 25 years old and have been married for five years.We have a four year old son. It seems that we are constant in battle with one another.Now we argue about sex. He gets angry when I do want to have sex as much as he does. I am willing to have make love with him once a week. However, I used to enjoy sex, now it is a duty. In addition to raising our son, I try to do things around the house to make him happy. It seems that nothing I can do will please him. I would love to feel the way I used to about him and about love-making. What can I or we do?

You and your husband married at 20 years of age and shortly thereafter had a child. You were barely out of your teens. You have a big responsibility taking care of child, a house and a husband. You don’t say much about your relationship, but I surmise that you and your husband may not have learned how to communicate well and probably don’t have common interests other than your child. Most couples who marry young have only their parents as models for marriage, and those models are not usually very good. So you are left to find out for yourself about what it means to be married. Children take up a great deal of time. They can be exhausting.It is easily a two-person job. Some couples learn how to share the responsibilities. Others, grow apart, each pursuing their own interests. This is a recipe for disaster Sex becomes the only point of intimate connection. And when that is problematic, there is no point of connection. In your situation it sounds like neither your child nor sex is seen as a way to connect with one another. I suggest that you seek the help of a competent marriage counselor – together – to discuss how you might find ways to re-vitalize and re-invent your marriage. Marriage counseling can afford each of you the opportunity to discuss the issues that are driving you apart.You owe this to your child and to each other.