To me, sex is both a relaxant and a stimulant, so it was difficult when Eva and I stopped having it. I questioned what I was doing wrong. Didn’t she find me attractive any more? Had I not been able to pleasure her?
We’ve been together for 10 years, and it was just after Covid that our sex life seemed to end. For three years we had sex about once a year. We would go to bed to watch Netflix, and then one of us would fall asleep. I don’t think our love had dissipated or changed. It’s just that sex became something that wasn’t important, particularly for Eva.
I find it easy to make myself come, and I like moments where I can just enjoy myself on my own, whereas Eva doesn’t masturbate at all. Still, it came to a point last year when I was considering whether I wanted our relationship to continue if it was sexless. It was difficult to have that conversation because I didn’t want it to sound like an ultimatum, but sex is non-negotiable for me. It’s something that one can derive a huge amount of pleasure from, but it’s also a reinforcement of love and intimacy.
Eva found it frustrating, and it took time for her to understand that sex wasn’t something I was trying to pressure her into, but something I wanted to do because we would both enjoy it. I started talking a lot more about my desires, about what I found really hot and attractive about her, the things I would like to do with her, and the things I would like her to do with me, to make her feel more empowered and desired. I find her incredibly attractive, and that’s never diminished.
In the past six months, our sex life has come back – we’re having sex a few times a week – which is amazing. It feels like a completely new stage in our marriage. She’s more playful, we’ll go out to dinner and she’ll whisper something about what she wants to do when we go home. We’re much flirtier with each other, and that comes back into the bedroom.
She’s exploring her desire much more, which really turns me on.
Sex is important to me, but in a really different way to Iris. For me, the quality is more important than the quantity. I think sex is a release from stress for Iris, whereas I need to be in a happy, relaxed place to be in the mood.
The impact of the pandemic and then a time when both of us were stressed with work led to a couple of years where we hardly had any sex. I knew it was a problem, but Iris put pressure on, which wasn’t helpful. It pushed me even further away, which was unfair on her, because she was just being honest about how she felt.
It’s probably quite normal that your sex drives don’t align at certain periods in your life, or you have a time where it just isn’t the priority. Our sex life reflected the relationship in a way, as it was a really stressful, difficult moment when we probably both weren’t in the best place. I missed having good sex, but I also knew that whatever sex we had wasn’t going to be what I wanted.
In the past few months, as we’ve both been happier in the rest of our lives, that’s been reflected in our sex life. We’re back in a place where we’re having better sex – and more of it. I think she’s less frustrated and so I want to be closer to her again.
It feels as though we’re in a new relationship even though we’ve been together for 10 years. It’s not that we’re trying new things – though we’ve spoken more about our desires. Our sex is still fairly vanilla, but it’s more fun, carefree and spontaneous, and we are so much closer now. I feel Iris thinks this is because we’ve had better communication, but I reckon it’s because we’re both happier and less stressed, and seem to have more patience with each other. Maybe we just got to a point where we decided that we did want to be together no matter what.