pailythorse
New member
Good morning,
My wife and I have gone an entire year now, to the day, without having any sex. This has not been a conscious decision on my part and it’s not part of any pre-established relationship dynamic or kink we have. It is also something that I feel effects me negatively.
A little background…
My name's Luke. (M/35)
My wife, Laura (F/33), and I have been together for 12 years, married for 7. We are in an openly polyamorous arrangement where she has a separate female partner, Linda (F/23). Laura and I had a perfectly good and normal sex life through most of our relationship. We did have a period of about a year just before the pandemic where we seemed to be a bit distant and the amount of intimacy decreased.
Midway through 2020, we discovered what we call “Dirty Twitter”. These were porn focused accounts on Twitter that she stumbled across. Her and I both created separate accounts, and shared them with each other, to explore this side of Twitter. For almost the whole next year, this heavily increased our sex drives and we were more intimate than maybe any other time than perhaps the very beginning of our relationship. We experimented more, we flirted more, we had sex more. That part of our lives was great.
Shortly after the start of this period is around the time my wife realized she was falling in love with her best friend, Linda. By the end of 2020 they'd be an official, although long distance, couple and we had decided together to open our relationship. Our close sexual bond continued while she began dating Linda remotely. They certainly had their own private sexy times together but it never seemed to interrupt ours.
About 8 months into their relationship, Summer of 2021, Linda came to visit for the first time since they'd been a couple. Linda had spent time at our house during quarantine as a roommate but they weren't out to each other then. They did have physical intercourse for the first time together that week. It seems that after thought our sexual connection started to wane. It made some sense to me - NRE, new experiences, having firsts, etc. - that our connection might take a backseat at first. She generally just seemed less engaged about sexual things with me. We only had sex on a handful of occasions over the next four months or so. Then it stopped entirely. From fall of 2021 until February of 2022 we had no sex at all.
This dry spell was both concerning and frustrating for me. I tried to talk to Laura about it on multiple occasions and, depending on her mood, she sometimes seemed open to the discussion. I want to say we did actually try and initiate sex once during this dry spell and she was unable to get into it at all. Anyway, when we'd discuss it she'd tell me that her sex drive was just lower than mine, she'd say she just hadn't been in the mood, and she'd bring up how bad the one time we tried to have sex during this period went, with her being uncomfortable and all. I was frustrated that I wasn't getting the answer I wanted but I really did try and understand where she was coming from and made all my best efforts to put this sort of thing behind me until she initiated.
In February of last year, she did initiate and we did have sex and we both seemed to enjoy it! Everything worked great, we were both happy with it, and there was an understanding that we'd ended out dry spell and this sort of thing would happen more frequently. That was the last time we've ever had sex.
Unrelated to all of this, Linda moved in with us in March of last year. The first few months she lived at the house reminded me of the couple of months the year prior where their relationship got a lot more attention for a while. Again, this made sense to me. With Linda and Laura in the same house, it became somewhat clear, that they're still sexually active with each other. At first, again due to NRE and all the feelings of newness, this wasn't that concerning to me. Throughout the year though, I felt myself feeling insecure and lonely in my position on the V. I've mentioned this to Laura on multiple occasions and Laura continues insisting there's nothing wrong with me or our relationship, she says that she's just not in the mood as much anymore and it just so happens that when she is in the mood, she's with Linda, not me.
The longer this goes on and the more and more nothing changes, the harder time I have believing that Laura and I are just missing each other when the opportune time arises. The insecurity and jealousy this has brought up within me has led to some disagreements and spats between Laura and I, the most recent being last week, but it's nothing we haven't made up for almost right afterward.
For her part, Laura seems mostly happy to just drop it and it seems like if I never mentioned or engaged in sexual thoughts or encounters ever again, it'd be too soon for her. I just have not seen even an inkling of a spark of her sexual attraction to me in the next year.
Aside from this one issue, I think we're doing pretty well. I'm genuinely happy about our poly arrangement. Laura asked me recently what I'd do if her and Linda broke up and upon being forced to think about it, my answer is that I'd be kinda crushed. I like our dynamic as the three of us and I love the way that Laura and Linda feel for each other. I think over the time we've experimented with this I've genuinely found compersion in their relationship. I get along well with Linda, although I've not really talked to her about this as it seems between me and Laura.
I have tried time and time again to put this behind me and just come to some acceptance that the sexual nature of our relationship might just be dead. When I do try and confront that, it kind of bothers me. I hate the idea of thinking we'll never be sexually intimate again. I can accept mismatched sex drives and I can accept this not being near as big a priority for us as it has been in the past. I have a harder time accepting that we're just done with this though.
I suppose I also struggle with how Laura communicates about this. She regularly insists its nothing about me personally that has caused this and that there's absolutely nothing I could do better to change her lack of interest in our sexual relationship. I even went as far as to asking her if maybe her sexuality had shifted and maybe she wasn't attracted to men sexually anymore. She refused to accept this premise and said she was still sexually attracted to men and to me, just that she hadn't been interested in actively having sex in a while. The couple of times I've brought up the discrepancy between how little we're having sex and how regularly her and Linda seem to be, Laura insists that I'm overestimating how much they have sex.
Respectfully, I feel like she's underestimating it when put on the spot in a discussion. We don't have a huge place, you can sometimes tell when other people in this house are sexually active. There's also been snippets and conversations where they've discussed or been open about sexual encounters they've had. I don't know the true amount of how frequently they're engaging but the impression I get from the outside is that it's relatively consistent.
Again, I do understand their relationship is different and their sexual experiences probably invoke a lot of different feelings.
None of this stops the feelings of jealousy and insecurity though. None of this stops the fear I feel when I consider that maybe Laura and I are no longer sexually compatible.
I'm sorry, I know that was a lot. I hope I was clear and fair in presenting our dynamic and some of the relevant details about what's going on. Do y'all have any advice? Have y'all seen this sort of thing before? Any thoughts on how I should proceed? I'm going to remain very open to any and all feedback and I'm happy to clarify if there was anything unclear to y'all.
My wife and I have gone an entire year now, to the day, without having any sex. This has not been a conscious decision on my part and it’s not part of any pre-established relationship dynamic or kink we have. It is also something that I feel effects me negatively.
A little background…
My name's Luke. (M/35)
My wife, Laura (F/33), and I have been together for 12 years, married for 7. We are in an openly polyamorous arrangement where she has a separate female partner, Linda (F/23). Laura and I had a perfectly good and normal sex life through most of our relationship. We did have a period of about a year just before the pandemic where we seemed to be a bit distant and the amount of intimacy decreased.
Midway through 2020, we discovered what we call “Dirty Twitter”. These were porn focused accounts on Twitter that she stumbled across. Her and I both created separate accounts, and shared them with each other, to explore this side of Twitter. For almost the whole next year, this heavily increased our sex drives and we were more intimate than maybe any other time than perhaps the very beginning of our relationship. We experimented more, we flirted more, we had sex more. That part of our lives was great.
Shortly after the start of this period is around the time my wife realized she was falling in love with her best friend, Linda. By the end of 2020 they'd be an official, although long distance, couple and we had decided together to open our relationship. Our close sexual bond continued while she began dating Linda remotely. They certainly had their own private sexy times together but it never seemed to interrupt ours.
About 8 months into their relationship, Summer of 2021, Linda came to visit for the first time since they'd been a couple. Linda had spent time at our house during quarantine as a roommate but they weren't out to each other then. They did have physical intercourse for the first time together that week. It seems that after thought our sexual connection started to wane. It made some sense to me - NRE, new experiences, having firsts, etc. - that our connection might take a backseat at first. She generally just seemed less engaged about sexual things with me. We only had sex on a handful of occasions over the next four months or so. Then it stopped entirely. From fall of 2021 until February of 2022 we had no sex at all.
This dry spell was both concerning and frustrating for me. I tried to talk to Laura about it on multiple occasions and, depending on her mood, she sometimes seemed open to the discussion. I want to say we did actually try and initiate sex once during this dry spell and she was unable to get into it at all. Anyway, when we'd discuss it she'd tell me that her sex drive was just lower than mine, she'd say she just hadn't been in the mood, and she'd bring up how bad the one time we tried to have sex during this period went, with her being uncomfortable and all. I was frustrated that I wasn't getting the answer I wanted but I really did try and understand where she was coming from and made all my best efforts to put this sort of thing behind me until she initiated.
In February of last year, she did initiate and we did have sex and we both seemed to enjoy it! Everything worked great, we were both happy with it, and there was an understanding that we'd ended out dry spell and this sort of thing would happen more frequently. That was the last time we've ever had sex.
Unrelated to all of this, Linda moved in with us in March of last year. The first few months she lived at the house reminded me of the couple of months the year prior where their relationship got a lot more attention for a while. Again, this made sense to me. With Linda and Laura in the same house, it became somewhat clear, that they're still sexually active with each other. At first, again due to NRE and all the feelings of newness, this wasn't that concerning to me. Throughout the year though, I felt myself feeling insecure and lonely in my position on the V. I've mentioned this to Laura on multiple occasions and Laura continues insisting there's nothing wrong with me or our relationship, she says that she's just not in the mood as much anymore and it just so happens that when she is in the mood, she's with Linda, not me.
The longer this goes on and the more and more nothing changes, the harder time I have believing that Laura and I are just missing each other when the opportune time arises. The insecurity and jealousy this has brought up within me has led to some disagreements and spats between Laura and I, the most recent being last week, but it's nothing we haven't made up for almost right afterward.
For her part, Laura seems mostly happy to just drop it and it seems like if I never mentioned or engaged in sexual thoughts or encounters ever again, it'd be too soon for her. I just have not seen even an inkling of a spark of her sexual attraction to me in the next year.
Aside from this one issue, I think we're doing pretty well. I'm genuinely happy about our poly arrangement. Laura asked me recently what I'd do if her and Linda broke up and upon being forced to think about it, my answer is that I'd be kinda crushed. I like our dynamic as the three of us and I love the way that Laura and Linda feel for each other. I think over the time we've experimented with this I've genuinely found compersion in their relationship. I get along well with Linda, although I've not really talked to her about this as it seems between me and Laura.
I have tried time and time again to put this behind me and just come to some acceptance that the sexual nature of our relationship might just be dead. When I do try and confront that, it kind of bothers me. I hate the idea of thinking we'll never be sexually intimate again. I can accept mismatched sex drives and I can accept this not being near as big a priority for us as it has been in the past. I have a harder time accepting that we're just done with this though.
I suppose I also struggle with how Laura communicates about this. She regularly insists its nothing about me personally that has caused this and that there's absolutely nothing I could do better to change her lack of interest in our sexual relationship. I even went as far as to asking her if maybe her sexuality had shifted and maybe she wasn't attracted to men sexually anymore. She refused to accept this premise and said she was still sexually attracted to men and to me, just that she hadn't been interested in actively having sex in a while. The couple of times I've brought up the discrepancy between how little we're having sex and how regularly her and Linda seem to be, Laura insists that I'm overestimating how much they have sex.
Respectfully, I feel like she's underestimating it when put on the spot in a discussion. We don't have a huge place, you can sometimes tell when other people in this house are sexually active. There's also been snippets and conversations where they've discussed or been open about sexual encounters they've had. I don't know the true amount of how frequently they're engaging but the impression I get from the outside is that it's relatively consistent.
Again, I do understand their relationship is different and their sexual experiences probably invoke a lot of different feelings.
None of this stops the feelings of jealousy and insecurity though. None of this stops the fear I feel when I consider that maybe Laura and I are no longer sexually compatible.
I'm sorry, I know that was a lot. I hope I was clear and fair in presenting our dynamic and some of the relevant details about what's going on. Do y'all have any advice? Have y'all seen this sort of thing before? Any thoughts on how I should proceed? I'm going to remain very open to any and all feedback and I'm happy to clarify if there was anything unclear to y'all.
