Sidle up here and listen closely. You may have lots of stuff going on in your relationship, but most couples who I see have some general themes. While there are women who want more sex from their husbands, it’s more often the reverse. Despite these having shifted some, the sex roles in our society are strikingly similar to what they were in the middle of the last century. The biggest difference in these is that women are much more likely to work outside the home. Even those who manage to stay home while their kids(if they have kids) are babies, generally return to work before their children head to school.
I have some advice for men who want their wives to feel “in the mood” more often—do the laundry! Make dinner! Bathe the kids! And do all this regularly, like every week, not just once a month or so. Women who work outside the home often report that they have two jobs—the one they get a paycheck for and the one at home. After making dinner and cleaning up while supervising the kids’ homework and bundling the little sweethearts off to get bathed, women generally just want to read a book or watch a television show and then crash.
There are tons of exceptions to this: some sex-reluctant spouses are stay-at-home mothers and some men make dinner AND clean up the kitchen every night. If these folks aren’t having good sex, they probably need to learn better communication. The most important aspect of communication—and the hardest to do—is to actually listen to your spouse. I’m not talking about whether you think you’re listening. What does your mate say? Does she feel listened to? Most often partners will say they listen, but their spouse tells a different story.
Listening is very hard because you often disagree with your mate’s assessment of you and your behavior or you remember things very differently. The thing about effective listening is to set aside the agree/disagree aspect and just hear what your mate is saying…even when you remember situations or behaviors differently. This is really unimportant. What’s most important is to hear her. You want that, too, right? Be a better mate and you raise the frequency of your bedtime fun.