Your Husband’s Libido May Not Be What You Think

During the years I was avoiding sex, every time I began to think that maybe it was time for me to work on sex, I was stopped by one thought:

If I start having more sex, he’ll still want more. It will never be enough.

I thought my husband would never be satisfied. He would tell me that he’d be happy if we had sex once a week—but when I would try that, then he’d try to initiate sex twice a week, or even more. This was especially the case when I would enjoy a sexual encounter.

It seemed that there was a constantly moving target. No matter what I did, it would never be enough. After all, it seemed that he was asking me for sex just about every day.

It was very hard for me to trust him, because he didn’t stick to his “once a week” request. I alternated between thinking he was intentionally tricking me and thinking that he just had zero self-control with sex and would never, ever be satisfied.

What was he thinking?

The truth is that my husband wanted sex every day. (I’ll say more about this shortly.)

He was starving for intimacy. He knew I wouldn’t agree to have sex every day, but he thought I might agree to once a week. Furthermore, he believed that my enjoyment (in other words, an orgasm) would make me desire sex even more and that I’d be convinced to have sex more than the once a week I’d agreed to.

He didn’t realize that the prospect of an orgasm was not enough to cancel out the other factors that interfered with my interest in sex, such as relationship dynamics and my stress level. (See Love Like a Woman: Should Your Sexual Response Be Like Your Husband’s? for more on this)

Like many women, the more frequently I have sex, the more I want to have sex. However, that desire is canceled out by a problem in our relationship—such as what I experienced when my husband proved that he wasn’t trustworthy (by going back on his once-a-week agreement). If I couldn’t trust his word on how often he wanted to have sex, how could I begin to trust him enough to be vulnerable enough with my body and my sexuality?

Some of you can relate to this all too well.

An imperfect analogy

My husband and I both thought that he wanted sex on a daily basis.

It turns out we were both wrong—and if my experience resonates with you, you may find out that you and your husband are wrong, too.

I’m going to try to explain this using food as an analogy. I know it isn’t perfect, because it isn’t like sex is what keeps us alive—although I will say that intimacy might be what keeps us from drowning in emotional despair and loneliness.

Sex is both physical and emotional. Many men talk about sex only in the physical terms. Perhaps they never learned HOW to talk about sex in any other way, or they see the physical urge as more justifiable than their deep emotional need.

The food analogy doesn’t do justice to the emotional aspect of sex, but it should work well enough to help you understand what I’m getting at.

Here goes:

When you’re deprived of food, you are always hungry. You probably think about food all the time.

Let’s say that you’re part of a research study in which you’re allowed to eat only one small meal every day. It’s enough to keep you alive, but it isn’t nearly enough to sate you. You’re still going to feel hungry most of the time.

When you finish your meal each day, you may already be thinking ahead to tomorrow’s meal—because you didn’t really get full from the meal you just ate.

At any time during the day, you might see the researcher and ask for food—not only because you’re hungry at the moment, but because you know you’ll be hungry again a few hours later and your next meal won’t be until the next day.

Your once-a-day meal is enough to keep you alive, but it doesn’t come close to satisfying you. And if the researcher asks you every hour if you are hungry, your answer is going to be yes.

You might even have access to one of those giant tubs of cheese balls at all times. You can eat whenever you want, but those cheese balls are just processed-cheese-flavored air, with no substance and no nutritional value. They may fill your stomach for a short time, but they don’t truly feed you. They’re okay as a snack, but they aren’t the food you are craving.

You might lose your knowledge of how much food you need to feel sated enough to not think you’re hungry all the time.

The research study comes to an end. You’ve lost all sense of how often you need to eat and what foods are fulfilling. You may go overboard for a few weeks, eating everything you can get your hands on, all day long.

But a few weeks or months later, you realize that you are eating wonderful regular meals again. They are full of all the nutrients you need. When you finish a meal, you feel satisfied.

You have recovered from your state of constant hunger, and your body has resumed a new rhythm of eating.

You feel fed.

Your husband’s libido

What your husband craves with you is intimacy and connection. There’s no replacement for that oxytocin hormone that accompanies sexual intimacy. He might masturbate, but that’s just the cheese ball version of sex. Masturbation is sexual junk food, not emotional nutrition. It addresses his urge for an orgasm, but it doesn’t come close to giving him what he is truly craving—you.

Your husband may think about sex several times every day because he has no idea what it takes to be sated. He thinks about sex every day because he is always mildly famished for intimacy.

When you have sex once a week, or once every two weeks or once a month or whatever, he immediately begins thinking ahead to the next time—because the experience he just had with you adds only a little to his emotional tank of love and connection.

But let’s say you do the work to address your struggles with sex, whether that means learning about God’s design for sex, seeking healing or repentance, addressing relationship dynamics in your marriage, or whatever.

You begin to have sex more frequently, and you come to enjoy it. You and your husband both find sex to be physically pleasurable and emotionally fulfilling.

After months of having his fill of sex, maybe even going overboard for a time, you may both be shocked to realize something.

This man who wanted sex every day because he was constantly hungry for emotional connection has settled into a rhythm that surprises you both.

His interest in sex may turn out to be several times a week rather than once or twice every day.

You know why? Because he now feels sexually nourished and fed.

And you know what else? If it turns out that your husband really does have the libido you both thought he did, after months of working on your sexual issues and learning to enjoy it, you might find that your sexual interest is a good match for his. You may even discover that you have a higher drive than your husband does!

The bottom line is this: when your husband is starving for sexual intimacy, he really doesn’t know how often he needs to sexually connect with you.

If you are afraid to work on sex because you’re concerned that he’ll always want more sex than you think you can have, know that his libido—and yours—just might not be what you think it is.

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Honeycomb & Spice Community

If you’re a Christian wife who missed my post last week, I want to make sure you know you’re invited to my new online community, Honeycomb & Spice.

It’s a private and authentic place for us to encourage each other as we grow and learn about sexual intimacy.

Image credit | mary1826 at Pixabay.com