"We Had Sex Twice in Two Years" - A Dead Bedroom Story

We got Jay here, says 20 years married this year, sex once in 2023 and once in 2024. My life— here's the key, Mr. Jay, let's dissect this a little bit. My life, he says, is completely shattered. And I'm not judging you for that. Who wouldn't be shattered by such a disconnection from the person they love more than anything, right? But she, on the other hand, she's not concerned. So Jay, my friend, not to beat you up, I know you're feeling horrible. He follows that up with another comment. Jay from YouTube says, sex is the number one issue for me. Again, he's fleshing out what I just said about how that's so important to men. And he says, but my wife can't understand that. All right, buddy. So we had all of 2023 and 2024. And probably, if I'm guessing, Jay, I don't want to put words in your mouth here. Probably not the only 2 years of a so-so— well, that's not even so-so. Those are disastrous years sex-wise with the relationship. But I bet you the years preceding that were at best probably like, eh, so-so, if not kind of like on the down. So usually it goes slope like this and then falls off a cliff, right? So I'm going to assume that's what's going on with you here. Uh, so you've had at least, by virtue of your description here, 24 months. 24 months. Of evidence to show this is bad. And I— so many questions. What I've learned over the years of doing this, since writing the book and hearing so many stories, is it's way more complicated than what you may think. A lot of men jump to, she's cheating. No, most of the time, no. A lot of men jump to, she hates you, you're so unattractive, you're gross, you're fat. You know, maybe Usually not the case. Um, but so many questions here, Mr. J. Um, have you had the nice healthy sit-down talk with her? The healthy version of the talk— what it is not is not sitting down going, why aren't we doing it? Don't you know that I have needs? Don't you know I'm losing my freaking marbles here? Don't you know I love you? Do you not love me anymore? Why don't you love me? Why aren't you showing me attention? Tears, sobbing, yeah, yeah, that's not gonna get the job done. And men typically, it gets to the boiling point, they get so crazy they do do that. The emotionality just explodes. A good healthy version of the talk might go something like this, Mr. J. Wife, have a seat. Kids, go upstairs. Leave your mom and dad alone for a minute. All right, last time I'm gonna mention this. What's going on here? This is weird. It's officially gone from concerning to weird. I love you. That's why I married you. You're the love of my life. I want to grow old and die with you. Get that out of the way. But this between us, this ain't working, obviously. It's not normal for a couple to not want to touch each other. Um, I see your last two comments. Let me finish my spiel here, Jay. Uh, something's going on between us and I am willing to work on it. I'm willing to do the work to bring us closer together as a couple, emotionally, intellectually, physically, all, all the above. It's not just about sex, because if you wife right now— and this is key, Jay, to say this— if you right now said, all right, fine, let's go to bed, I'm not gonna know We got a ways to go before we get there. I don't want, all right, fine, whatever. I want you and us again. Or you and me again. Us. Couple. Date nights. Going out together. Talking. Cuddling. Da da da. We've lost that completely as a couple. We don't do any of that. And you certainly don't want to cross the threshold into the bedroom stuff either, obviously. I'm trying to figure out why, and I'm willing to work on that. Are you, wife, willing to work on that? Because if you say no, we're cool. I'm afraid I'm gonna have to go separate ways and find somebody else to better match my energy here, because I'm, I'm too good of a person and I'm working too hard on us to get this. This is officially weird and highly dysfunctional, which she should know, Mr. J, because you have followed up with— let's start with the second message here you just sent— she is a therapist. Pausing for dramatic effect. Here is a woman who helps other people, who is in at least a 2-year, 24-month sexless marriage. She knows the therapy talk. She knows the "you help me, I help you, let's get through this" talk. And she chooses not to. She says, "We can do it once we get emotionally closer, but she won't talk or open up or spend time with me." She sounds like, I, you know, hey, let's be honest here, Jay. A lot of women watching this later will scream in the comments, so let me get this out of the way. We're only hearing one side of the story, Jay's side. Jay's like frustrated, 2 years, blah blah blah. We may sit the lady down, Miss Therapist, and go, what's going on with you? And she may have legit reason after legit reason for doing this. She may say, I've told him 100 times this, I have this underlying physical, emotional thing, whatever it may be, I don't know. In her mind, whether you, Jay, and all of us go, sounds like horseshit, may be legitimate in her mind. And frankly, that's all that matters. Her body, her brain, her whatever, she can do whatever she wants. Jay says, she says that all of her clients don't want to have sex with their husbands either. She says this is normal. Wow, your poor wife's clients. Jesus Christ, that's terrible, dude. No, it's not normal. It's wildly dysfunctional. Use her terms back at her. Wife, you come across as a very hyper-avoidant person, dismissive avoidant person. Use those terms. This is the attachment theory vernacular. What happened to your wife in your childhood that led you to this point to think that this is normal? Because, wife, I I hope you're not telling your clients this because it's not. It's hell. A little follow-up interesting thing. It depends on what study you read and so forth, but at the very least we can say this conclusively. It is not unusual for the dismissive avoidant person in the relationship to have an extramarital affair. That blows a lot of people away. Like, this sexless, seemingly asexual, completely unemotional, I-don't-give-a-shit person runs off and does somebody else. Doesn't that point then that the problem is inherent in me as her anxious partner? She's really turned off by me. She just wants somebody else. Woe is me. I'm horrible. I'm terrible. No, no, before you go down that road, no. What it's more indicative of is For these people, I'm inferring a lot, I'm assuming a lot, acting like a know-it-all here, just going by a few sentences here. But, but I see this so often that I can kind of speak in platitudes here. Um, this dismissive avoidant person in the honeymoon stage of the relationship, you're still getting to know each other. All the good chemicals are soaring through your body and brain and makes you a horny creature, men and women alike, and get a lot of loving done. A lot of love yous, I love you forevers, and sex, and all this other good stuff happens, right? And then things get real. You marry, and men notice it goes, hmm. And then you move in together, hmm. And you have kids, hmm. And he's like, where'd the love, where'd the affection, where'd all that go? As soon as you get real, that requires a level of vulnerability, of intertwining your two lives together, all that good stuff that we all want within a marriage, right? Unless you're an avoidant person, and that's the last goddamn thing you want. You don't want to be intertwined with another person. You value your independence and everything more than anything else. If that sounds kind of like a masculine trait, most avoidant people are men, but there's a lot of avoidant women out there too, which I have learned over the years because I have this group, the HFM Brotherhood, and I've put out all this material, and I see in the comments we have a lot of anxious men married to very avoidant women. And I can again speak in platitudes as well to say these avoidant people do not make good long-term romantic partner prospects. One-night stands, short-term girlfriend, sure, sure. As soon as it gets real though, buddy, it don't work. I think that's probably what you're seeing with her. And they will find every piece of evidence to show that, nah dude, this is normal, get off my back. And the next thing you know, you catch her banging some dude at the office. And they're often the most cold about it. Yeah, I did. So what? What you gonna do about it? Yes, divorce, whatever. It's really no skin off their back. They look at that and go, oh, I get to break free from this anxious person. Great. I prefer to be alone anyway. I'm worried that she refuses physical intimacy because she's terrified of emotional intimacy. Says Jay. That's the avoidant thing, my friend. She hates opening up. You're laying the bricks here, buddy. You're, you're building a temple of avoidance in your wife. Your wife needs a lot of help, but your wife's already a therapist. You're not going to be the one to tell her she needs a lot of help. She ain't going to listen to you, buddy. Jay, my friend, this is probably not going to get any better on its own. Here's the big question, my friend. Play pretend you know her probably better than anybody on the planet, right? If you went to her today and said, this weird, this sucks, this is abnormal, I'm going to leave, wife. What is her reaction, Mr. J? I hate this conversing back and forth because I'm waiting on a comment and he's typing or he's distracted. He went to get a cup of coffee, went to take a whiz or whatever, so we can't have a live conversation here. I will answer for J. What I hear from most men— well, I should say what I hear from most men is, you know, Ralph, I really don't know. If you asked me yesterday, I would have thought this, but now I'm kind of thinking this. And so that they eventually do— they had their like, shit, I'm done with this shit, I'm— I can't do it anymore. And they have the, I'm sick of this shit, we need to work on this talk, or I'm out of here. What a lot of them are very surprised about is how quickly the wife jumps on the I'm out of here option and just says, cool, let's do it. The guy's like, seriously, been married 15, 20 plus years, whatever, and you're ready just to quit like that? No, you're the one who brought it up. It's like, yeah, but I was hoping you would say, okay, let's not— let's avoid that and let's work on this. That's the whole point. No, I found me an apartment across town anyway. I was looking at them anyway already. And the guy's like, geez, that was fast. They detach. They don't have that They don't have that mechanism at play that allows them to attach in a nice, vulnerable, healthy, normal human way. The way that is basically required, again, for a long-term marriage. They don't have a successful long-term marriage. They don't have those tools in their toolbox. And here you are going, you wanna? And they're like, I don't, I don't know how to do what you're talking about, so no, I don't wanna. I'd rather go to option B. Like, really? You're willing to throw away all this, the family? Like, yeah, it's kind of surprising, which I think maybe a lot of men innately know, which is precisely why they don't bring that option to the wife. They don't want to hear it. The men are really stuck in there like a tick. It's a very codependent kind of nasty, uh, relationship they're in. Um, and Jay says, you've been at couples therapy for 6 months and zero improvement, physical or emotional. What is it you hope to get out of this, Jay? Oh, and then you say she touched your hand in bed and it caused such a rush of emotion and pain in you. You are so far apart. That's sad, dude. It always breaks my heart when I hear these poor guys, like in my group and so forth, guys, I have great news. Last night the wife touched my leg when we were next to each other watching TV. And you're like, oh, this poor bastard. Like they're so starved for just normal love and affection, which there's nothing wrong with, which there's everything normal about, healthy about, that when they get something like you say, touched my hand while you're in bed, even like an incidental, they roll over, flop over half asleep and touch you, and the man's just like, oh, Susanna, I'm so starved for this love. What's interesting is, um, when combined with a lot of, uh, self-improvement. Like, going to the gym is the most generic, obvious version of this. Some big promotion at work, now he feels like a big shot, something that pumps up his confidence quite a bit. Um, those super anxious guys that used to be so attached and so starved for affection— I'm not going to leave this woman, whatever— those guys have like affairs like that. And part of you says, dude, what the f— the other part of you goes I get it. After being starved for attention for so long and trying like hell to reach across the table to the woman and say, don't you love me like I love you? And getting dejected, dejected, and finally somebody comes along, goes, I, I see all your improvements, I like you. And you're like, hot damn, let's do this. Pretty common. So Jay, be careful, that's what I'm trying to say. But, um, if you'd like to chat with me one-on-one about this, you can certainly do so. HelpForMen.com, go to coaching in the menu. Better yet, Join our group, the Brotherhood. Let me put it in the comments here. This is helpformen.com/join, and that'll get you to our men's group support community. Mr. J, so many men have been there and done that. You're not alone. It's— it goes right back to the beginning of this live. I don't know if you saw that where I say, um, out of all the topics that I've ever talked about on here for the years, decade plus that I've been doing this, No other topic compares to men being unhappy about the level of sexual intimacy within their marriage. Number one by a long shot. And when I started all this, that was not the, the focus. That was a topic of many topics, dozens of topics that I talked about. I just was hitting the computer like fitness and health and finances. Like I say, parenting and Starting over and dating and then sex and marriage. And finally people took notice going, I like that, that I can relate to, sex and marriage, tell me more. Wrote a book about it and the rest is history. And here we go in the comments, guys like Jay sharing their story. Thank you, brother, I appreciate it.