It's Been a Few Months Since I've Given it Up.

Am I horny for it? I am getting there.

Sometimes as a woman, it feels like we are just there to please our partners. I had been feeling overwhelmed and overburdened by responsibilities and needed to tap out (no pun intended)of the physical aspects of my relationship. I felt like I had nothing left to give and asked for space.

It wasn’t anything personal. My husband and I have been together for 13 years and have a 12-year-old son together. We got pregnant the first time we had sex way back when.

So our relationship quickly fast-forwarded through most of the courting and dating that most relationships enjoy.

Before I knew it we were getting in our scrubs and heading into labor and delivery. I hadn’t even ever farted in front of this guy.

We knew we loved each other and our short relationship was pretty hot and heavy before

I found myself expecting a few months after our first meeting.

We’ve been busy raising our child, getting married when he was 4, and moving across the country a few years ago, but lately, I just needed a break from physical touch.

Yes, I am sure my dear husband took it personally and he didn’t know what this meant for our marriage, but thankfully it led him to look inward instead of reacting negatively. He was mature about it and although at first he may have felt hurt he took it upon himself to dig deep. He began helping more around the house with responsibilities that were feeling overwhelming to me.

Since sex has been off the table in the last few months, I have felt more like I have a partner and less resentful of “doing too much.” I have lately felt seen and heard more frequently and like my partner sees me for me. If he laughs at my jokes I don’t feel like he is just trying to get into my pants. I genuinely feel loved and cared for.

I think this has a lot to do with my past and not as much to do with my partner. I became sexually active at 12 and had a long line of yucky sexual partners and ideas about myself in the sack. I needed to feel empowered and less like an object.

My husband explained that sex is how he feels loved and that connection is important to him and I needed to hear that I was more than a physical object. I needed to hear that I am more than boobs and an ass. It was something personal in me that was struggling with being intimate and vulnerable. This is while I had just published a memoir that felt extremely telling. I felt naked and exposed and being actually naked and exposed felt like too much.

I am feeling much better now. I am feeling like I am close to getting it on, but I also like the intimacy building between my husband and me. It’s like we are newly dating. There are no expectations, but there is more connection without the physical act.

I think we can get stuck in our ways and begin to lose sight of what it feels like to actually pay attention to our partner. We start to nod our heads and look down at our phones when we’ve heard the same story for the umpteenth time. We may begin to take advantage of the person we live with believing that they are just an accessory to the home and not an actual human being with feelings and emotions.

We have a right to say when something doesn’t feel right and we can hope that our partners will walk with us through it and not get huffy and run away.

We are worth the wait.

We deserve the time to stop and reflect on why we may feel a certain way.

I can’t guarantee that taking sex off the table in your relationship will work as well as it has for mine, but it’s worth a try if you’d like to regain some balance and perspective in your relationship by taking away the physical and focusing more on building that foundation of emotional intimacy.

I don’t want to be expected to do the deed If I don’t feel like it and am thankful to have a partner who understands or is trying to anyway.