Unless a woman directly states that she wants sex, a man may feel that his initiation could later be perceived as unwanted or aggressive.
In today’s climate, the idea of consent can be very scary particularly for men who already tend toward anxiety and/or passivity. He is scared about you thinking he pressured you into sex. If you haven’t been vocal enough about not liking the current dynamic, he may not be initiating because he assumes that, luckily enough, you and he are both turned on by you initiating.Ħ. Many men fantasize about a woman wanting them so much that they initiate sex. Also read this book review of The Surrendered Wife unfortunate title for thought-provoking book.ĥ. Read this about how you can own your contribution to this dynamic and potentially change it for the better. This is just a personality type and it is likely that it frustrates you in other arenas as well. The same man who coasts through his career, who lets his friends reach out versus reaching out to them, and who lets you run the show in all other areas of the marriage is unlikely to initiate sex. It is the rare man who has the desire and/or courage to initiate sex with a woman who seems angry at him (although men who can power past that fear often end up having great sex).Ĥ. Men are just as likely as women to feel a flagging or total effacing of sexual desire in the face of emotional distress. He is angry with you or feels you are angry at him. If this is the case, you should have noticed a profound slackening of his rate of initiation around the 2 year mark, when the honeymoon stage is usually on its way out.ģ. due to depression or low testosterone, or it may always have been present but masked by a honeymoon stage endorphin and adrenaline rush which artificially biologically inflated his natural libido. Even if you rejected him a long time ago and feel differently now, he may be holding on to that pain and resentment and be loath to open himself up to rejection again.Ģ. Men who go this route tend to be emotionally avoidant and uncomfortable with vulnerability. He figures that it will be easier on him emotionally to just turn off his sexual initiation capacity and wait until she approaches him, when he knows there is zero likelihood of rejection. And now he feels anxious and insecure about putting himself out there again. He feels he was rejected by you frequently in the past. There are many reasons that your husband may find it difficult to initiate sex. Unpursued women that I see in counseling often fantasize about a man who would take charge in the bedroom and directly express their sexual desire.
They may be even more hurt than constantly-initiating men are because of the popular conception of women as the pursued gender. Just as being the lone initiator hurts men, women who are constantly having to initiate sex (or pre-initiate) become less confident in their desirability, frustrated by their partner’s passivity, and resentful about their need to constantly be the one who puts themselves out there sexually. Despite popular media’s caricaturing of men as constantly initiating and women as the fickle gatekeepers of sex, there are plenty of couples where the woman feels sexually rejected. For every woman who is frustrated by their husband’s constant sexual initiation, there is a woman who feels jealous of that dynamic.