Hi Achokis,

I have been married for five years. The only problem is that whenever I don’t agree with my wife, she gets upset and even denies me sex.

I feel that I always have to agree with her and make her happy for me to be happy in our marriage and for me to get sex.

I’m getting tired of this, but don’t want to spoil my marriage. What should I do?

Our take

Relationships can sometimes be strenuous, especially during this Covid-19 season. 

It seems you have noticed a certain trend you are not happy about. As couples, we don’t realise we sometimes get into a parent-child relationship with our spouses. 

We treat them like children. We reward them when they are good and punish them when they misbehave or when they don’t succumb to our demands.

We use silence and sex as a weapon to manipulate each other. This only hurts the relationship.  

On the other hand, we need to be reminded that men get to their emotions through sex whilst women get to sex through their emotions.

It could be that when you have conflict, because of a lack of proper conflict resolution skills, you leave each other wounded and thus it becomes difficult for your wife to even think of sex leave alone engage in it. 

For you as a man, sex is physical while to your wife, it is emotional. If she’s not feeling good about the marriage, it becomes hard for her to respond to you sexually. 

Your wife fails to connect to you sexually since her emotional needs are not being met, while you fail to connect with her because you are upset your sexual needs are not being met. And so the vicious cycle continues leaving both of you hurt.  

Connect with one another

Try and resolve your conflicts well. There might be many factors that will cause her to react in this way, so don’t label or judge her, but try to understand her. 

Ensure that your wife’s emotional needs are met, listen intently to her emotions, and validate, don’t belittle, her feelings.

Guys tend to listen more for the facts instead of the feelings and so you need to switch to her FM (feelings mode) not your FM (facts mode) if you want to connect with her.

Conflict is not about fixing the problem, but rather trying to understand and empathise with each other. 

Another thing you can do, knowing your partner’s reaction, is to switch off sex mood and first attempt to talk.

It is difficult for a woman to switch gears into sex after a major conflict. She needs to calm down. 

That is part of reawakening your partner’s sexuality.  Be aware of and let her know how you feel when she denies you sex without accusing her.

Use “I” statements in expressing that to her and hopefully she will understand you. Should things not improve, please seek professional help. – The writers are marriage and relationship coaches [email protected]