Why She Hasn’t Touched You in 8 Years (And Why Chores Won’t Fix It)

Okay, if you're a frequent listener of the Dad Starting Over podcast and you find yourself saying, "Yeah, that sounds like me," well, you don't need another podcast episode. What you need is support. The Help for Men Brotherhood is where men go when they're done pretending that they got it all handled. You know, your dead bedrooms, your divorce, your loneliness, your rebuilding life. We have private forums, frequent live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching courses, all my books at no additional charge. And yes, we get together in person. Real men and real conversations. So stop doing this alone and join the Help for Men Brotherhood today at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting. When you've been in a dead bedroom relationship for 8+ years, is it fair of you to expect them to flip a switch and become a sex-starved horn dog all of a sudden for you? Or is that just wishful thinking? Let's talk about it on today's episode of Dear DSO. And if you would like to submit your own story or question, you can go to deardso.com, fill out the form, and if your story is a good one, I'll create a video out of it for the whole world to see, or for the podcast listeners to listen to on the Dad Starting Over podcast. You can listen to it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you may listen to your podcasts. Check it out. And if you're watching this on YouTube, do me a favor, pause for a moment, go down below and click on subscribe, click on like, leave a comment, share this, man, I would greatly appreciate it. Now on to today's submission, and this one comes from Dave, and the subject line is Iced Out. Doesn't that mean like wearing a lot of jewelry or something? Anyway, he says, I'm 54 years old and I'm married for 13 years. My wife have been in a sexless marriage for about 8 years now. We have had sex less than 10 times a year for those 8 years. Any advance I make, she just giggles and tells me to stop. And when I ask her if she wants to have sex or say that it's been a while, she says she doesn't want to be pushed. We recently went away for 4 days for my birthday. Aside from holding hands walking around Florida, there was no contact. Here is the crazy thing, he says. I do all of the food shopping, all of the cooking. I pay all the bills. I do half of the laundry, and I help her with cleaning the home. We have no kids, so there is no distractions other than 3 dogs. I am getting to the end of my rope. So there's no real question here for Mr. Dave, but it's just venting, if you will. But it's one that if you've watched my stuff or you've read my material, you know, this is, you know, not unusual, unfortunately. So age, I think, is a big thing here. You're 54 years of age. You got married when you were both— I'm going to assume she's the same age. You're leaving out some details here. Always frustrating with these messages when they leave out so much detail. But 54, I'm going to assume she's around the same age. Which I'm doing the math means you guys got together in your early 40s. And for the last 8 years of your 13-year marriage, no nookie or very little, 10 times a year, that comes out to less than once a month. Ugh, not good. Most men would say that is substandard. Most therapists would say, yeah, that's problematic, that's not good. Unless of course you are both in the low libido category and you're both like, eh, we don't need it all that often at all anymore. I'm happy, she's happy, whatever. Those people exist, more power to you, awesome, but that's not the majority of people. The majority of dudes out there are like our buddy Dave here. So I brought up the age thing because there's a giant elephant in the room here, and that is this thing called perimenopause. Real quick overview, I am no medical doctor, I'm not an expert in this, but I know enough, you know, to be dangerous, I guess you could say. And the thing is that perimenopause, you could think of it, if you think of a human being as a series of dials, and these dials all represent different, of different chemicals and hormones and endocrine systems within the body. And when we are of childbearing age, fertile age, and let's stick with women here, um, our dials are all tuned just right. The right amount of estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, thyroid function, all these other things all work in concert to make a very fertile woman who's ready to make babies. Well, there is a process unfortunately that occurs in human animals where we get to a certain age, and that age varies woman to woman. Some women, it happens as early as like mid-30s, late 30s, early 40s for most women. And that is the slow but sure process of cranking those dials down a little bit. And it's usually not until, for a lot of women, that they don't feel, that they say, I don't feel quite right. My energy for going to the gym is gone. I'm really cranky around the kids and the husband. I'm lashing out at people. I'm not sleeping well. The other day I had— I was overcome with a lot of like a hot flash, a lot of heat. Surely this isn't menopause already. I'm only like 41 years of age. The women say they go to the doctor and the doctor says, let me do a blood test. And he or she will say, oh yeah, you know, compared to the blood test we did 5 years ago or so, look at this. All your numbers are slowly going down. It's not menopause territory. But you're inching slowly close to that line. And that's the process that we call perimenopause. And that slow creeping towards the menopause line for some women can last like 10 years or so. Yeah, a lot of people don't know about this. And that's the process for a lot of women, not all women, where the libido goes from here to off the table, done, gone, unfortunately. And there you are, Mr. Dave, going, but it's not gone for me. I know life ain't fair, dude. So for the past 8 years now, you have been told in no uncertain terms that the sexual side of her is almost— it's basically gone. That romantic, lustful, sexy side of her is kaput. She's saying like, "Hehe, yeah, don't touch me. Nah, I don't like to be pressured. That ain't me, dude." I'm not saying it's perimenopause, but that probably has something to do with it if I had to guess. Or it just could be just how she is, dude. And she's 40-some years of age, or I'm going to assume you're 54. I'm going to assume around the same age. So now as time moves on and as we get closer to that line, or as we jump over the menopause line, excuse me, into full-blown menopause, for a lot of women, it's sexy time is over. Sorry. Now a lot of people have come to some kind of compromise with this. Where they will go through the motions. She may not be the most willing partner in the world. Once she gets into the act, she enjoys it somewhat, but not nearly as much as she used to in her 20s and 30s. But she loves her husband. She loves their time together. She goes through with it. Others say that side is done. We will do other things in the bedroom other than full-blown intercourse to have fun together. All the way to some people say, you go get your jollies elsewhere, dude. I will look the other way. It's just, you know, wink wink, we both know what's going on here, but we don't talk about it. All the way to, we are, we do talk about it, we're very open about it. I know he has a girlfriend on the side. Oh well, ain't no big thing. All the way to divorce and all that good stuff. And then here you are saying like, I do the food shopping, cooking, all these domestic things. Damn it, isn't that supposed to turn the libido on? Because you do preface all that by saying, here's the crazy thing, dude, have you not read my material? Check out the Dead Bedroom Fix. You can go to deadbedroomfix.com. I talk about this phenomenon of the, I guess you could say, chore play. And for those that don't know, chore play is basically the act of going through, doing a lot of domestic stuff around the house to impress mommy, I mean your wife, and saying like, look what all I did. Now will you reward me with the sexual intimacy? Just saying it out loud, it's not the sexiest thing in the world, is it? Now, in a lot of men's defense, this concept of doing stuff to get nookie from wife, especially the domestic stuff, didn't come out of nowhere. It's not like we all just got together as dudes and said, "Hey, what do you think we should do to get sex?" And somebody goes, "How about chores?" And we're like, "Woohoo, let's go for it." No, our women quite literally tell us, "Perhaps if you did more around the house, dude." And our more anxious guys just jump to attention and say, "Absolutely." And like you did here, "I do all the cooking, all the cleaning," and you're like, I'll be damned, didn't work. Well, of course not, dude. Apparently you haven't been watching my stuff very long. You do stuff around the house as a team. It sounds like you're doing more than your fair share here, but you do stuff as a team together because you're adults and that's what adults do. You live together, you're kind of roommates, hopefully more than that, but in your case, not so much. Co-parents if you're younger. You guys are older and you have no kids, you admit. Um, when I got to the part of you saying I got no kids, my eyes got big because I was like, um, that's basically the glue that keeps a lot of these kind of relationships together. The dude says, if I leave, I'm going to lose like all my wealth, and I'm going to have to pay child support and alimony, and I'm not going to see my kids half the time. But you're a 54-year-old dude with no kids. Pausing for dramatic effect here, I don't know what else to tell you, dude. This is how she is. You can put in more work if you wish, but you have the menopause thing working against you. You have 8 years of evidence working against you that says like Dude, this is just how she is. What do you expect? But you know, if you want to say, I want to try all there is to try before checking, you know, all the boxes before leaving, then certainly, you know, check out my book, The Dead Bedroom Fix. I also put on some free Dead Bedroom Fix seminars. I got one coming up here soon. I'm not going to give out dates because this video could be watched at any time, but just check out Dad Starting Over on social media. I announce these seminars quite a bit. We're a little Q&A session. We talk about this stuff. You may want to check that out, but at the very least, Dead Bedroom Fix. You could also check out deadbedroomfixcourse.com. Absolutely free, no strings attached video course. And by the way, um, little secret, you also get a copy of the book at no additional charge. How cool is that? May want to check that out just to say you've tried everything, right? But dude, even as the author of that book, I'm here to tell you it's probably not going to move the needle at all. I don't know what to tell you, man. This is who she is. Mother Nature is not working in your favor. And on and on. What is it about you, my friend? You've probably heard me say this, oh, I don't know, a million times. What is it about you that hangs on in such a situation? And don't just throw out there, I'm a man of vows and I'm a man of honor and so forth. No, you're a very anxious man who is trying like hell to win favor of somebody who doesn't want you in that way. Hear me again, you're putting in a lot of effort, a lot of time, a lot of emotionality into a person who for 8 years has shown you, I don't want you in that way. I love you, but not like that. I'm assuming a lot here. And if I'm speaking as her, I would follow up to that by saying, and it's not you, dude, because I'm a 50-some-year-old woman for the past 8 years since perimenopause hit and everything else. I've shown you that's not me. I'm not like that. So leave me alone, please. In that way, it's time you listen to her. Leave the poor woman alone, okay? I know you want a lot of sex. I know you want all that. I'm with you, dude. I'm right there with you. But if my spouse, you know, 8 years— and first of all, I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't put up with that for months, let alone years and years. A long-winded way of saying, I— you guys need to have a nice little sit-down talk and say, we both know what's going on here. It's weird. It's not right. It's, um, Yeah, so what do you think, wife? How are we going to resolve this? You got to come to some kind of compromise here. Otherwise, you're just beating your head against the wall. You're not going to get anything done this way. All right. Thank you so very much for reaching out. If you would like to talk to a group of men about this issue and more— by the way, this comes up all the time in our group. We have a group called The Brotherhood, and you can learn more at help4men.com or jump right to the join page at help4men.com. Join and learn all about the HFM, Help for Men, brotherhood. We get together, private discussion forums which are extremely active, live Zoom meetings. We have a whole bunch of those. We record them all. We have an archive of over 1,200 hours of meetings recorded. My books that I mentioned, no additional charge. I've written 4 of them. Austin on our team, he wrote one too. Get his book at no additional charge. Uh, you can work with me one-on-one. We get together in person. We just— as of today, we just, uh, I just returned from a our annual gathering. We just had it this year. We had it in Charleston, South Carolina. A bunch of us got together in a big beach house. It was amazing. So Dave, we would love to have you. So check it out, Dave and others, check out the Brotherhood, helpformen.com/join. And Dave, thanks again for reaching out. I appreciate it, buddy. Best of luck to you.