***Collaborative post***
Maintaining a mindful marriage is not easy. It means looking at and appreciating the good in your marriage, but also being wary of the bad, and taking care of those aspects before they cause a serious rift. A seeming loss of attraction, oft accompanied by a decrease in sexual intimacy in a marriage, can become a serious problem. As such, it’s worth taking the time to identify any causes that might be behind it.
Talk about physical intimacy
Sex is an everyday part of marriage and, while outside circumstances can make it a little harder to get intimate with your partner, there should still be signs of physical and emotional affection that aren’t necessarily for the bedroom alone. If your partner doesn’t cuddle, kiss, or show simple physical intimacy, then it may be because of deeper reasons. They might feel their own sex drive changing with age, for instance. However, there can also be physical and emotional health issues at the root of it, too.
The question of mental health
Mental health issues of all stripes can affect our desire and ability to feel sexual attraction. Depression has been known to decrease sex drive drastically and stress may mean that someone is too focused on minor problems in their life to “get into the mood.” If your partner has been changing, it may be a sign that they need to seek help, rather than a change to do with you.
Sexual dysfunction is a real threat
Aside from the mental health issues that can affect our desire to be intimate, sexual health is another aspect that is worth addressing. For instance, a surprisingly frequent issue in marriages where physical intimacy becomes rarer and rarer is pornography addiction. Not only can it mean that a partner never shows interest in real intimate contact, but it can affect your feeling of self-esteem and self-worth as a partner. Addictions of all kinds can destroy marriages, so it’s important to address them and treat them thoroughly.
Have you changed?
Self-reflection can be difficult and it’s important to ensure that it does not turn into self-blame. However, if you have experienced excessive weight gain since the beginning of the marriage, it can affect the attraction of your partner to you. Furthermore, it may have affected your own self-esteem. You might notice that your partner doesn’t initiate as much, but it could be the case that you haven’t noticed your behaviour has changed in the same way.
Remind your partner why they were interested in you
Marriage changes a relationship, turning it from something that’s purely attraction-driven into a partnership that’s as practical as it is passionate. Taking the time to date your partner can help you both rediscover what it is that drew you both to one another, helping to rekindle things in the bedroom and beyond.
It might hurt to look into the reasons why your partner isn’t showing the kind of interest that they may have done, before. However, it’s worth identifying reality through honest and empathetic communication. You may, after all, be mistaken and find another reason for the shift in your marriage.
