Sometimes I get questions on our Have a Question page and I have to guess at what’s being asked, since I don’t have any contact info to follow up with.
Here’s a message I received yesterday:
my taking no interest in sex now a days ,the reason he is saying that i am not behaving properly to him an his parents.is this areason [sic]
I’m going to guess and I think this is what was being asked:
My husband is taking no interest in sex nowadays. The reason he gives is that I am not behaving properly to him and his parents. Is this a good/valid reason?
Now, to quote an old saying, two wrongs don’t make a right. If you are being disrespectful, that doesn’t mean it’s okay to your husband to withhold sex. That said, it’s understandable, even if it’s not okay. After all, we all want to feel respected, but often for men, that’s a very strongly felt need, and disrespect could seriously impact your desire to be intimate with your spouse. But, a reason is not an excuse.
However, your husband isn’t here to write to, and you are (hopefully). If you want to regain a healthy sex life with him, the best thing to do is probably not to hit him over the head with a post about how he should be continuing in his “husbandly duties”, but rather to apologize sincerely and fix the underlying issue. Because if you brow-beat him into sex, he’s just going to end up resenting you, and eventually you’ll grow to hate sex as well, as there will be no intimacy in it, just an act of compliance, and that’s not what we all really want from our spouse.
Sex needs to be an emotional connection as well as a physical one, and if somebody is angry or offended by the behaviour of their spouse, or the emotional relationship is bad for other reasons, then it isn’t a good thing to link those negative feelings with sex. Like you said, if there are hard feelings, they should be dealt with. Talk with each other and get to the point where there is understanding and forgiveness., then have reconciliation sex to heal the hurts and re-commit to the relationship.
I don’t see it often where the husband doesn’t want sex because of disrespect. Usually it is the wife who is offended by something and does not want sex, or uses refusal as a punishment. The husband usually will have sex no matter what. And, usually after sex the problem is often resolved, because it does not matter anymore. The problem that was thought important is no longer so.