Almost three months ago, my husband told me he no longer felt the same romantic or sexual desire for me. He couldn’t explain why. We were in our first year of marriage, after five years of long-distance dating, and I was trying to understand how finally living together had left me feeling so unwanted.
I’m 25 and he’s 31. When we lived apart, seeing each other meant making out, touching, kissing, and barely being able to keep our hands off each other. I didn’t have to wonder whether he wanted me. His affection made that pretty clear. I expected everyday life to feel different from visits. I didn’t expect so much of that affection to disappear.
The change came gradually after we moved in together and got married. At one point we were having sex about once a month, and most of my attempts to initiate ended in rejection. But counting how often we had sex never quite described what hurt. He rarely wanted to make out anymore. Passionate kissing stopped being something he naturally started, and holding hands had apparently become childish.
Even when we did have sex, it could feel mechanical, with very little time spent getting close beforehand. That was difficult to square with the man I had known during those years apart. I missed the feeling that he enjoyed wanting me, including all the small things that used to happen without either of us having to request them.
Our serious conversation did lead to some improvement. Now we have sex around four or five times a month, and some of those times have felt genuinely passionate. I don’t want to erase that because I’m still unhappy about other parts of our relationship. There has been a change for the better. It just hasn’t answered everything, especially his admission that his desire had changed without an explanation he could give me.
I’ve asked him whether he watches porn. He says he doesn’t. What has stayed with me is an older conversation from when we were dating: he brought up porn himself, seemed to suggest he watched it, and told me not to lie about watching it myself. At the time, he sounded casual about the subject. Remembering it now, I find myself wondering how that conversation fits with what he tells me today.
It doesn’t prove he’s lying. Someone implying they watched porn years ago doesn’t establish what they do now, and I have no evidence that he currently watches it, much less that he’s addicted. I’m aware that feeling rejected makes an explanation tempting. A specific cause would give this confusing change a shape, but wanting an answer doesn’t make the one I’m worrying about true.
I don’t want to accuse him unfairly or search through his private life to settle a suspicion. I’m left with the contrast I can actually describe: the husband who now sometimes wants passionate sex with me, and the husband who used to reach for my hand without treating it as something we should have outgrown.
