My wife and I have been together for seven years. I honestly can’t remember the last time we had sex– it’s been at least a few years. For most of our relationship, I’ve taken on the role of caretaker. She struggles with anxiety, was recently diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)and often needs a lot of emotional hand-holding. Over time, it’s taken a toll on how I see our relationship. We also fell intoa habit of using silly, childish voices with each other. What started out as playful has ended up making me feel more like her mother than her wife. For a long time, I didn’t have much of a libido, and to her credit, she didn’t push the issue. But now that my sex drive has returned, it feelsas if it’s all I can think about– except I just can’t seem to feel that way about her any more. Every time I’m briefly tempted to initiate something, it gets snuffed out by the same patterns: the childish behaviour, the emotional neediness, the feeling of being needed more as a caretaker than a partner. Is it possible to break out of this dynamic? Or have we crossed a line that can’t be uncrossed?
When one partner becomes a caregiver to the other, the erotic charge between them is very likely to be reduced. And when the childlike element you described creeps into the relationship, a sexual taboo arises. Your feeling of being mother to a child is most definitely not sexy; it connects your psyche with a deep and forbidden sense of incest that is never going to allow you to desire your partner. If you want to desire her again you will have to encourage the adult side of her to be present and engage with you as a competent individual in your lives together. It’s possible she may have developed some of the behaviours you dislike as a coping mechanism. If you do not want to spend your life mothering her you must refuse to support the childish behaviour, which is a form of control and passive-aggression. The first step would be to have a frank, adult, non-blaming conversation about the state of your union. Validate the parts of her that are mature and self-reliant, and gently let her know that you would be doing her a disservice to support her learned helplessness any longer.
Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a US-based psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders.
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