Five the explanation why your spouse will not sleep with you – and the best way to repair it

Not getting enough sex? Chances are your wife or girlfriend isn’t getting what she needs from you to put her in the mood.

I hear the same complaints, time and time again, from women who don’t want to sleep with their male partners.

From not taking charge in bed to ignoring ’emotional intimacy’ there could be many reasons she doesn’t want to sleep with you. 

Meanwhile helping out more around the house could also improve your sexlife for the better.  

Here are the top five tips to help you try to turn things around…

YOU DON’T TALK TO HER

‘Why should I have sex with you? What have you done for me lately?’

Emotional intimacy is vital for sexual intimacy. Put plainly: if you don’t have meaningful conversations with your wife, she’s not going to want hot sex with you.

In the early days of a relationship, most men at least make an attempt to listen to their partner articulate her emotions. As time goes on, lots don’t even pretend to make the effort.

This may be because some men aren’t great at the whole ‘let’s talk about emotions’ stuff. What comes easily to women may be hard work for you. Doesn’t let you off the hook though…

Takeaway: Making her feel heard is all about being curious. Ask her about her day. If something happened, how did it make her feel? Show genuine interest in her life and when she talks, really listen. Make eye contact, nod, look at her.

YOU DON’T DO YOUR FAIR SHARE

‘He watches me make dinner, clean up, do the kid’s lunches, then looks astonished when I say no to sex when we’re in bed.’

The link between how much housework men do and a couple’s sex life is well established: the more the man does, the more frequent sex is and the more satisfying it is for her.

It’s the idea of fairness that makes the difference – and what a difference it makes.

New Australian research has gone one step further and added the ‘mental load’ to the chore equation. Who is responsible for the overall planning and organisation of the chores that need to be done to run a household? Because even when men do contribute to the physical part, the planning of it usually still falls to the woman.

Not surprisingly, women in equal mental and physical load relationship reported feeling happier and felt a stronger desire for sex than those where women felt taken advantage of.

Takeaway: Keeping your home clean and organised is a couple job, not a women’s job. Tell your partner you want to split things more fairly, create a schedule, stick it on the fridge – and stick to your part of the bargain.

YOU IGNORE THE ‘SHE COMES FIRST’ RULE

‘Having sex to him is intercourse. There’s three minutes of pretend foreplay – a quick squeeze of my breast and a fiddle around – then off he goes. He orgasms, I’m not even slightly aroused.’

It’s a term coined by the American sex therapist Ian Kerner who wrote the book, ‘She comes first: the thinking man’s guide to pleasuring a woman’. In it, he suggests a simple but effective way to bridge the gender orgasm gap.

Given that women rarely orgasm through intercourse (only 25 per cent do) but men nearly always climax (95 per cent), it’s sensible to make sure she has an orgasm before moving on the ‘grand finale’ of sex, which is nearly always intercourse.

‘She comes first’ is an ethos that’s been heartily welcomed by women – and men who want their partners to experience as much pleasure as they do.

Takeaway: Orgasm shouldn’t be the goal of any sex session but it’s undeniably nice when it does happen. Foreplay is when most women have orgasms during partner sex: through oral sex, using your fingers or a sex toy. Your new mantra: she orgasms before you do. Do whatever it takes to make it happen.

YOU DON’T TAKE CHARGE IN BED

‘He’s just too…nice. He asks me if it’s OK to do stuff. It’s so unsexy, it makes me want to scream.’

People-pleasing isn’t attractive out of bed and it sure as hell isn’t in it, either.

The hero of the Fifty Shades of Grey series became every woman’s fantasy not just because he was hot and rich but because he took what he wanted, without asking.

True, most of the book’s extreme stuff is best left as a fantasy. But ‘I’d love it if my partner threw me on the bed and ravished me’ is something I hear all the time.

Not taking the initiative, not being confident in bed – it’s unappealing. If you’re always passive and uncertain, it makes us feel like we have to ‘mother’ you; stop receiving pleasure and rush to reassure.

Being dominated taps into our base, intense, primal desires. If you’re in charge, you counteract any of the ‘good girls don’t do this’ stuff that lurks in the basement of many women’s minds, however liberated.

Takeaway: Harness your inner ‘Christian Grey’. Grab her face with both hands and really kiss her. Remove her clothes frantically, like you’re about to touch her for the very first time. Suggest a tie-up game, give a playful spank. Ask her what her fantasies are.

YOUR SEXUAL TECHNIQUE DOESN’T WORK FOR HER

‘It dawned on me that the reason I was so turned on by him was mainly because I wasn’t supposed to be. (It was an affair.) With time, I soon realised he was a selfish lover and had no clue of how to pleasure a woman.’

No-one notices technique in the beginning: novelty creates enough excitement and passion to make the clumsiest lover seem competent.

It’s around the three month mark that technique problems start to surface. Habituation and desensitisation kicks in – your sexual system says ‘Hey, I’ve done this dozens of times already, you expect me to still be excited?’ – and suddenly you notice they’re a little rough or jerky and that’s never done it for you.

Technique tends to be more important for women than men, probably because we get our orgasms from your hands and mouth. Your orgasm tends to rely on thrusting your penis in and out of our vagina: not much skill required from us there!

How she deals with this revelation sets the tone for how sex will be from now on. If she speaks up and says, ‘Hey, I’d love it if you did X and Y, can you do that and for longer?’, you’ll have set the foundation for satisfying, happy sex. Good sex communication has been established.

If she doesn’t speak up and pretends to enjoy it and climax, she’ll be less and less eager to have sex with you (why would she if your technique does nothing for her?).

Takeaway: Educate yourself. Head to traceycox.com and search ‘guide to oral sex’ and ‘guide to hand-job’ and you’ll find lots of tips on technique. Ask her if there’s anything she’d like more or less of. If she didn’t speak up at the start, it’s difficult to turn around 15 years later and say, ‘Actually, I’d like you to do everything differently’, so try out a few new techniques rather than ask her to criticise the old ones she’s pretended to like.

You’ll find info on Tracey’s books, podcast, products and lots of practical sex advice at traceycox.com.