Rebuilding Marriage Intimacy After Exhaustion & Low Libido

So I don’t know what to make of this situation. My husband and I have had a very lackluster sex life for a while now. I’ll start off by saying that I’m on multiple medications, three of which are known to lower libido. Towards the beginning of our relationship I wasn’t keeping up with my medication well, so I was often more hypersexual in the first year or so. I will be transparent in saying these medications are for a hormonal birth control, an antidepressant and an antipsychotic. Now it’s almost 7 years later and I have almost zero libido to bring to this marriage. I think there could be some external factors playing in here, like the fact that I don’t feel he is very romantic at all. I think in the seven years we’ve been together, we maybe have been on one actual date. Also I know that we’re married already, but it bothers me that he never even gave me a proper proposal, nothing of the sort. No grand gesture, no gesture really at all other than a spur of the moment whirlwind question of “do you wanna get married?” While cooking in the kitchen. It didn’t feel special. He doesn’t make me feel special. And in that lack of romance I find myself not wanting to give my body up to him. But I’ve told him about this and he says I’m viewing sex as a transactional thing rather than an act of intimacy between partners. But I don’t feel the spark. He doesn’t make me feel the spark. And it’s not like he can’t, it just feels like he doesn’t try to. He says the ball is in my court when it comes to physical intimacy with him, but I don’t want to be the one initiating physical and emotional intimacy almost every single time. It’s exhausting. But he says that because of my rejection towards him for these reasons, that he has lost a great deal of confidence in himself and doesn’t even want to try to initiate things anymore. But I feel the exact same way!!! And he gets angry or irritated when I express that!! It just feels so cyclical in our emotions of “my needs don’t feel met here, so I don’t want to put effort here” But I feel like I do still try to have sex with him more often than I’m truly in the mood for, and I try so hard to accommodate his needs in that way, but I always feel like I’m falling short. How can I repair intimacy within my marriage without feeling like I’m fawning to his sexual desires and forgoing my own emotional ones?? I’m at such a loss.

Describes a cycle of diminishing intimacy in a seven-year marriage, exacerbated by medication-induced low libido and a perceived lack of romantic effort from the husband. The user feels caught between their desire for emotional connection and the pressure to meet their husband's sexual needs, struggling with a transactional view of intimacy and the feeling of emotional exhaustion.

I relate to this a lot, although I’m actually on the opposite side of the libido mismatch. I tend to be the more hypersexual person in my relationship, and intimacy has become really tangled up with rejection and attachment for me. When my partner isn’t in the mood, intellectually I know that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love me or find me attractive. But emotionally, I can take it incredibly personally. Sometimes my brain translates “I don’t want sex right now” into “I don’t want you.” Then suddenly it isn’t even really about sex anymore. It’s about wanting to feel desired, chosen, connected to, and reassured that I matter to him. We’ve gotten caught in some painful cycles around this too. I can become hurt because I feel rejected, then pull away or get angry, and that reaction can make him feel pressured or afraid of disappointing me, which makes initiating intimacy even harder for him. Then I notice him hesitating and experience that as rejection too. Both people can end up protecting themselves from rejection in completely opposite ways. There have also been times when intimacy happened but I still felt devastated afterward because what I was actually craving was emotional closeness too—being held, cuddling, feeling like he wanted to stay connected to me. I’ve even gotten into that contradictory place where I’m so hurt that I don’t want him to touch me while another part of me desperately wants him to come toward me and reassure me. It can be really confusing for both of us. So reading your post, I really feel for both sides of this. I don’t think you’re wrong for needing romance and emotional connection before sexual desire can show up, and I also understand how repeated rejection can affect the confidence of the person with the higher libido because I’ve experienced that fear from the other side. One thing I’m learning in my own relationship is that sex can start carrying way too much emotional weight. It becomes proof that I’m desirable, proof that we’re okay, proof that I’m loved—and that puts an enormous amount of pressure on both people. I’m trying to separate “my partner isn’t available for sex right now” from “my partner is rejecting me as a person,” while also being honest that affection, reassurance, cuddling, and feeling desired are genuine emotional needs for me. I definitely don’t have this figured out. We’re still working through our own version of it. But I think the way out probably has less to do with either person forcing themselves to give more and more to the other and more to do with figuring out how both people can feel wanted, emotionally safe, and allowed to have boundaries at the same time. Mostly I just wanted to say that the cycle you’re describing is very real, and you’re definitely not the only couple who gets stuck there.