r/HappyMarriages

I feel a little pathetic for posting about this, but I miss my spouse so much when I am at work. I can’t blame it on work completely. It has always been stressful but no new changes. I just can’t wait to get home and be with her. The world is just a little more drab without her around.

Anyone else struggle with this? I am going down to half-days on Friday soon so it should help some.

EDIT: You guys have made me feel so much better about my yearning. Perhaps I have only been interacting with people in less-than-happy marriages.

Gentlemen,

“May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe, a graceful deer may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be intoxicated with her love.” (Proverbs 5:18-19 NIV)

We had been Christians all of thirty days when we got married. An older couple in our church shared the above passage with us shortly after we were married. I was twenty years old with an eighteen-year-old bride and thought it was pretty cool that the Bible was so positive about sex between married couples.

I am truly blessed to have been intoxicated with my wife’s love for over forty years.

https://preview.redd.it/ljvi5zo97r0h1.png?width=437&format=png&auto=webp&s=129dd3a3290b6750301f1969b7a228f2edf8e4c7

I have a friend who has been married for 10 years now. They were the like the ideal couple who everyone praised and knew that they will end up together and they did. They had great intial 5 years of marriage before kid. After the kid came along, things started going downhill.

My friends wife completely got absorbed as a mom which intially my friend admired but then after some time there was no affection towards him and almost no intimacy. She is only affectionate towards her child due to which my friend literally feels like a " sperm bank" his words. He asked her to go with him to couples counseling but she denied saying nothing is wrong. Now he says it has been 5 years like this and he wants to end the relationship but is scared because of divorce laws against men and not seeing his child. Before you say, he takes care of household chores a lot like almost everyday cooks. He asks her on date and she says she is busy with kid.

This thing I have noticed in various relationship where one partner stop giving attention and affection towards other after having kids, not necessarily women but most of the time which I have seen like they go into completely mom mode and ignore their partners. In my marriage it was like we both cared so there was no problem like that.

Have you seen it or unknowingly ignored your partner and then realised it??

My wife and I have been very sexual over the years. We did everything; missonary, 69, cowboy/cowgirl, doggie, anal, sledgehammer, ect. However a handful of years ago, a surgery went bad and she is slowly disintegrating before me. She wants to have every form of sex, but her body won't let her and screams in pain. We havent had any kind of sex in more than a year. Looking for advice.

a couple of months before my husband and i got married, i met up with a friend who had recently tied the knot and they shared a bunch of significant problems that they were navigating with their husband. i remember it made my stomach drop & i was so anxious that the first year of marriage would be a gauntlet.

my husband and i didn't live together before marriage, but now we’re almost a year in and nothing has changed? i‘m not sure if it’s because we were together over 3 years before we got married, because we negotiated a lot of our conflict tendencies and other issues before then, but we have adjusted with minimal issues. we’ve only had 2 larger conflicts since then, and both were resolved the way we always have (sharing our hurt with one another and talking things through).

why is there so much fear-mongering around marriage, and the first year in particular??? (aka - why don’t people get married to people they actually just enjoy being around and get along with)

My wife walked up to my home office door, stopped, and stared at me while I was on the computer. I stopped what I was doing and stared back into her eyes.

I thrusted my hand out and pointed at her for a moment, then made a C shape with my index finger and thumb.

“I’m squishing your head!” I said, furiously pinching my two digits together. She gasped, holding her hand to her heart, as if I had insulted her very being.

She countered with pointing back squishing my head, all while rushing up to me and screaming “SQUISH WAAAAR!!!”

12 years happily together. Times like these remind me why!

My husband (66/M) retired earlier this year and life gets sweeter by the day. He is well educated and had a highly stressful job so I (60/F) was a little concerned about his not being able to keep his mind busy. Since he retired he has done small projects in the house, taken over all house keeping duties and started a new hobby at which he is really good.

The other day I came home from work and found that he had noticed I was almost out of milk (I start my day with a cup everyday) and bought more. It sounds simple but I was overwhelmed with gratitude that he has shifted his mental energy to caring for me and our home while I continue to work. I immediately found him and thanked him. He laugh and said it’s his job now. He also keeps my car filled and washed. He is the best Househusband ever and I make it a priority to thank him for his work.

I'm interested to understand the ladies thoughts on this one,
I personally have done MFM in the past with randoms and mates, but it was always about us getting of being young, 18-22. but this time I was to make it about her, we both focus on her finishing multiple times, have fun, be cheeky, swap in and out when tired. i'd be the focal kisser and holder, the third is just there, but if she wanted him to be more engaged I wouldnt mind. We've discussed every variable, and we've made progress, but then i realised she want moving closer to it for me, and less for her, so i pulled the pin then and there. Why do you think that its not for her, shes a very sexually active and great in bed, we have amazing sex, i guess i just want her to experience something most people dont, and i know shes fantasised about it prior. whats everyones thoughts??

Feeling lost as to how to plan dates for my partner with busy schedules. Thoughts? Suggestions?

Him: you 😏

😍🤩💃🎉

My man can never keep a secret or surprise for me. After 15 years, I'm starting to think it's cute finally🥰

Husband and I have been together for 13 years, and we've never been "compatible" in regards to sex. We've managed to build a good life together despite that, although of course the conflict that its caused (both of us feeling neglected in different ways) has caused big wounds. We do not want to split up, and are open to getting help. There are several reasons we haven't up until this point (cost, having moved states a bunch, the stress of finding a good therapist being a barrier for both of us, etc.)

A couple years ago I realized that I was developing some trauma in our relationship because of how often I was forcing myself to have sex because I didn't want to deal with the tension/fights that would happen if too much time passed (I can't relate and it still bothers me but I do understand that sex is a need for him in a way it isn't for me yet after too much time passes he would just get really irritable and imo begin acting very immature). I am not asexual. I do orgasm when we have sex with a vibrator. But, that is the only part that feels good. The before, the after, everything is generally uncomfortable (sensory stuff - below.)

We've reached a workable compromise that Friday we have date night and sex, so it is at least once a week, but long term it won't work for him. But were both in agreement that I shouldn't force myself to have sex when I seriously am not open to it. Having it once a week at least gives me time to mentally prepare. Once we came to this agreement, I expected more effort on his end to helping me figure out how to make sex more enjoyable, but I just haven't really experienced it from him. He's kind of just waiting for me to give him instructions, but I don't have any either, in my mind we need to figure it out together cuz I kind of need him to experiment lol. It's tiring that it's all on me to find a therapist, to find books, to suggest things to try... I feel a little resigned and frankly annoyed he hasn't put any effort in.

The book Come As You Are has made the fundamental issue really clear: I have sensitive breaks, and an insensitive accelerator. He is the opposite. (Lots of things turn me off, few things turn me on, lots of things turn him on, very little turns him off.) It is possible I have a sensory processing issue. Light touch, bright lights, poor smells, messy spaces, +, are really negatively stimulating for me. I have an almost daily meditation practice I do to help with it. I usually use pot the days we have sex to tone it down, which really does help tremendously, but I don't want to do that forever and plus I am pregnant now. (Don't worry, were both happy about this.)

Unfortunately, this all makes me a really "needy" partner sexually (truly not needy otherwise, I'm quite independent, maybe to a fault, which generally he struggles with) so the context and setting around sex is extremely important for me whether I like it or not. Understandably, this is exhausting for him. But it's a necessity for me in order to mentally be open to sex. My love language is acts of service, and I have asked for a handful of small things that "take the breaks off" (shower before hand, water and towels on the bedside table, lamps and candle on, a few minutes of tidying up the room, no phones in the bed.) I have not asked for this in a demanding way, I've let him know that it would make me feel appreciated and understood which would in turn make sex more appealing. We've agreed to sex on Friday nights, and I would prefer to look forward to it. These things help with that.

He has been helping a lot more around the house. I appreciate it. And, he has never attempted any of the small things I've requested above. It seems like he thinks helping around the house more is enough of a change, but we both work the same amount of hours and I definitely carry the mental load of being the project manager of our lives, so helping around the house doesn't feel like generosity, it just feels like things are finally fair.

And little by little we are working through this, but I just hate feeling like I am asking for too much. But, I need more. I probably need some kind of weird tantric foreplay. WHO KNOWS.

(By the way, we are the only people we have ever slept with and he is for better or for worse the most loyal person I've ever met. I have zero suspicion he will leave or cheat on me, so please just don't even mention it. I have let him know that it is ok if we don't work, but he's just from a we make it work family. And I am too, ultimately. Tired of people stopping at "you are incompatible, end it." We are very compatible in other ways.)

Wow, thank you for reading this far.