Dear Elsa,
I am a Scorpio woman married to a Pisces man. We are sexually incompatible. He is not willing to do what I need to be sexually satisfied. We have talked about it many times before, and still I spend my sexual encounters with him unfulfilled (plus they are now down to once a month). I have gotten to the point where I am uninterested and bored, and I’m wondering now – six and a half years into this marriage – if this is what I really want for the rest of my life.
I have a huge sex drive and spend more time satisfying myself by thinking of sexual scenarios that <em>don’t</em> involve my husband. What should I do? I am extremely unfulfilled!! I have started to feel indifferent about the entire situation, but my lack of being sexually satisfied is a deep resentment I hold against him. Help.
Agonizing
Dear Agonizing,
I have been in your circumstance and I am afraid I don’t have good news. I have never seen a person with a low sex drive all the sudden spring to life and become a five alarm fire. I have also never seen a person like you lose interest in sex. On the contrary when people exist at opposite poles like this, the gap seems to widen. Slowly at first, but eventually it gets where you are now: once-a-month sex, and up the road, once every two months, and eventually never at all.
There is no way I can tell you to leave your husband. But I can tell you of my experience with this, which has been very similar to the experience of others I know. That is, horny people like you who have been in these no-sex or low-sex situations.
What happens is eventually you leave because it just becomes unbearable. And you wind up with someone with drives and desires more like your own and the result is BLISS! And then you look back on how you were living in this constant state of hunger and you wonder how you did it. You know why you did it. Loyalty! But how is hard to fathom.
So I don’t have advice, just information. What you do is up to you.
Good luck.
Forgive me for Psychologising Agonizing, but have you tried couples therapy/sex therapy? I think it is very difficult to sustain a relationship when there are such differences in need and such unfulfilled hunger but I think if you still love him and want to give the realtionship one more shot then it might be worth it. Perhaps there is a reason, or a hang-up as to why he’s not into sex etc., or why you’re not having sex (too tired/stressed/pressured etc) which might come out in couples therapy.
Or perhaps this is just something which cannot be resolved, at which point you get to face your dilemmas again.
Best of luck.
I’m with Elsa on this one. 1,000 percent.
No amount of therapy can change someone’s *fundamental* sexual drive/libido.
I wasted 15 years of my life. Please don’t do the same.
Move on. And this time, make sure you’re getting what you need.
I agree. And sometimes it’s not even a matter of sex drive. Sometimes it’s a matter of chemistry. Like, for instance, if you don’t like someone’s natural scent, it gets harder to have sex with them. I don’t mean that they’re dirty but their natural scent when they’re clean and fresh. You all know what I mean? Anyway, I think this is HUGE, even more important than looks.
I wrote Elsa a few months back cuz I have the same problem. It got so bad (no sex) that the next thing I knew it had been 5 fucking years with no sex with my husband. I finally jumped on him one night and gave him an ultimatum. Well, alot of good that did, because now I’m ready to file for a legal seperation, and we all know what comes after that. So run now, and dont look back, you deserve to be fulfilled sexually!!
I’m sort of half and half on this. I agree with her to an extent, but I do think you have to be careful because sexual hang-ups are so common (i.e. I think almost everyone has one or more) and if you’re like me, you had a husband who simply hadn’t ‘woken up’ his sex drive and gotten past his blocks for years, starting with when he was 27. He didn’t make significant progress from there until years later.
It’s good to explore your options. I’m glad I didn’t leave my husband. He didn’t deserve it and we are much closer now and more intimate in the past couple years than we have ever been.
Now, I think it depends highly on the circumstances. I think willingness and counseling are a hugely successful combination. If he doesn’t see a problem and doesn’t move to change at all, despite how you’re feeling, then that is another story. He may show some resistence, even if he is willing, due to fear, but if it’s just minor resistence, it can be worked with. Something more fundamental cannot.
This is something I have very intimate knowledge with in my almost ten years of marriage (though I’m the Pisces and he’s an Aries). I suggest joint counseling (if you can get him to go, mine wouldn’t), but I have to agree with the whole inability to change someone’s basic sex drive.
I wish you luck in finding a solution, but sex is a dealbreaker.
I would like to echo the therapy route, a sex therapist if possible.
I’m more like (surprise!) the Pisces here. I think the more of a problem this is for the wife the more inhibited the husband will become.
My late ex was a highly charged sexual Scorpio; me, a little fishy who was fine if we had sex only once a month at that point in our relationship. One day he just screamed at me “what’s wrong with me”? We ended up having this huge fight because he wasn’t getting enough and thought he was the problem (or I was the problem in not being interested in him anymore). After a while we finally worked it out that he needed more sex and I needed more communication (grunting as a form of hello just doesn’t cut it for me); he’d get a more enthusiastic partner if I got a more communicative partner (there were other, petty, issues as well that came up). The fish will swim along not making waves for as long as possible. Most, when confronted, will tell say what’s really going on inside.
However, I don’t suggest screaming at the fish. When provoked, I’m a shark, not just a fish. Screaming at most fish will send them hiding – I start looking for the jugular 🙁
I’ve been having a problems with this lately myself, but on the opposite foot (for the most part).
On my part, though, I’ve been having unusually low self-esteem lately which massacres my sex drive. Since I haven’t been interested, my man (Scorp Mars & Venus, poss. Asc) has taken to masturbating more, which makes me feel worse (unattractive, ya know?). So, basically, a big, viscious circle. However, I know that once I start feeling better, our sex drives will mesh again, and that gives us a reason to work at it together.
I agree with Elsa that fundamental differences won’t change, but if there ever was a time when your sex drives *were* compatible, give him a second chance. There’s probably something impinging.
I have to agree with everyone else… Try the therapy, but if it’s not a resolvable issue, then you’re gonna have to move on. I’ve got a powerful sex drive myself, and I accept that it’s a huge requirement for me – that I have a partner who can keep up. There’s nothing wrong with that. *shrug*
i’m wondering, if you’ve been married for six and a half years, has this been an issue the whole time? i would look to what’s changed, if something has.
sometimes, differences in sex drives are fundamental and inherent in the individuals involved. sometimes, especially when there has been a change, it’s related to changes in circumsntances or relationships, even if the parties aren’t conscoiusly aware of it.
ditto to SaDiablo and goddess… sometimes “not being in the mood” has to do with something someone isn’t talking about… being self-conscious about one’s own weight gain, or being turned off by your partner’s weight gain (and feeling terrible for feeling that way, and not wanting to say anything), or a Real or perceived) decrease in emotional intimacy, or… anything. counselling (individually or together) *might* reveal some underlying issues that are the core of the problem.
if not, like Elsa said: you either learn to live with it, or you learn to live without…
I know exactly what this woman is going through.. it’s miserable being with someone who can’t do anything for you. i’ve only been married 3 years and it’s been rough and the sex is pathetic…however, i cannot go without. i have found myself a young scorpio male who rocks my world and i feel alive again. i’ve been dead inside for 3 years. i’m sorry ms. scorpio’s pisces didn’t work out. maybe she should find a younger man with a libido that suits her.
Im commenting on a question almost 3 years ago later but maybe just maybe you listened to your heart and attempted to work this out with your husband. I am married to a pisces and have observed that they tend to put little emphasis on sex whereas i am just short of being a nympho-i need the physicality of it. My DH will get lost under his own daily stresses and will forgot about my carnal needs. But when i do bring it up- its take a lot of patience- i do it in a calm voice and let him know that i need some loving and he does step up to the plate. He is the ONLY man that has been able to satisfy me every time we make love which is what helps me keep calm when i do bring it up. So with frequent gentle prodding, my dreamy pisces sweeps me off my feet. My pisces husband is the most compatible person i’ve ever met in this lifetime and even though our sex drives don’t always mesh all the time, when it does its magical.
I’m a fish and haven’t been laid in fifteen years so I don’t feel sorry for you at all. I’d be happier than flies on shit if I was getting it once a month. You’re crying about nothing in my opinion. Why don’t you just tell him that you want to get humped by other people, If you’re honest about it he won’t care, but if you try to hide it, you’ll get your wishes, you’ll be fucked.