u/I_Like_Vitamins

My wife and nesting partner (“Lamb”) and I have been together over 10 years, married for 7, and poly for about 5. Overall, our relationship is stable, affectionate, and emotionally close, but our sexual relationship has declined dramatically over the last several months.

We used to have a very enthusiastic and connected sex life. Now we’ve only been intimate a couple times in recent months, and lately it feels like she has little to no physical desire for me at all outside of our nightly cuddles before bed. Even then, she’s often reading while I spoon her, which leaves me feeling emotionally disconnected and unwanted.

Because we’re poly, I’m not sexually deprived overall. I have other partners and my physical needs are being met. But what I miss is our sex life specifically. I miss feeling desired by my wife. And because we’re poly, there’s also this difficult layer where I assume she may still be experiencing desire elsewhere, which intensifies the feeling that something about us has changed.

We’ve talked about this in couples therapy. Her perspective was essentially that sex changes over time in long-term relationships, and that I need to self-soothe and build a life that doesn’t depend on sexual validation from her.

Intellectually, I understand that nobody owes anyone sex, and that libido changes happen. But emotionally I’m struggling with the feeling that our erotic connection has become unimportant to her while still being very important to me.

Three things I would love to hear from others about: 

1.      how people distinguish between a normal long-term ebb in sexuality vs. a deeper disengagement,

2.      whether others in long-term poly marriages have experienced this asymmetry,

3.      how to cope with feeling romantically/sexually unwanted by a nesting partner even while other relationships are healthy.

I’m especially interested in hearing from people who have navigated this without turning it into blame, coercion, or resentment.

I (f) have a meta (f) with HSV2. They’ve had two outbreaks in the past 6 months. She and our shared partner (m) have sex without condoms a couple times per week without condoms. He and I exclusively use condoms (this is at my request, mainly due to the known hsv2). This has been the arrangement for about 4 months. Today, my partner told me they’d had sex a few days into one of her outbreaks. I am really trying not to react based on stigma, but that made me uncomfortable. I would be far more comfortable if the two of them wore condoms, but I am unsure if it’s an overstep to ask them to de-escalate their relationship in that way. I would be comfortable enough continuing as we have been, but it almost feels unfair, that we are taking this precaution and they are not. Thoughts?

I know with love comes risks, and I love big on those rare occasions I do fall in love. Long story short, I am in love with someone with whom I wanted and imagined a future where we were still connected. I also have a lovely nesting partner with whom I have kids. I can see heartbreak coming in my non-nesting partnership (dynamics have changed that make this less healthy for me— and I’m starting to see they may not change). I’m so worried about how that will impact my household, kids, spouse. Losing this person and our time together/having to walk away to protect my sanity is going to feel like a part of my sky is falling. Does anyone have advice after going through something similar? I don’t want my whole house to have to go through this with me.

How do you deal with being HPV positive and sexual connections with other people?

Recently I went on my yearly test to test myself for HPV and for the first time in my life I tested positive for some of the strains. My partner also tested positive.

We're both sexually open people in a poly relationship. We've had experiences with couples and other people both together and separately.

I feel completely devastated. I keep thinking that no one will want to have sex with us because we tested positive and that we'll be kind of forced into a mono relationship. And it can take years for the body to fight of HPV...

These feelings are really intense for me, I feel like it started impacting our shared sex life (becoming distant, not wanting sex that much as before). We've already had other issues before that - me being frustrated with not being able to form a relationship with someone else other than my partner (constantly meeting people who are interested in enm/poly and then running away once they feel they could get attached to me) and us being frustrated with little sexual experience we have with other people, even though we wanted more. On top of that, HPV.

I really don't know how to deal with this. Has anyone had such experience and can share how they dealt with that?