I Get Irritable When My Wife and I Don't Have Sex

“

If my wife and I don’t have sex for 2 or more weeks, I start to get irritable, frustrated and every little thing about her bothers me. How do I cope with this frustration?

“

This is a complex question with many potential answers.

One of the ways we can explore this is to understand the part of you that gets frustrated. We all have parts and that one part that experiences frustration may have very specific reasons why it feels that way.

Is that frustration coming out of a deeper feeling of being rejected?

Are you taking your wife’s lack of interest in sex personally?

As a sex therapist, I’d like to know that part’s story. 

It may be useful to explore your attachment style with a therapist. People with an anxious attachment style can be more prone to taking a ‘no’ to sex personally, as they are playing out an attachment need from childhood.  

Sometimes men feel that their sense of self-worth is dependent on their partner saying ‘yes’. It may be useful to explore how you feel about yourself depending on if the answer is ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and how that impacts frustration levels. 

From a relational perspective, in this case, when you take a lack of interest in sex from your partner personally and express frustration, how does that impact your partner? Most women feel less sexual desire if a frustrated partner is projecting that experience onto them as their fault or responsibility (intentional or not).

I’d also encourage you to consider that foreplay is broad in a relationship. It consists of everything that has happened since the last sexual encounter. Being frustrated most likely doesn’t produce very arousing foreplay. It is important to create the conditions in which the partner who has less sexual desire is more open to sexual engagement. When one partner has desire, the couple must co-create the conditions necessary for the partner who has 'responsive desire'.