Among the more popular relationship stories of 2014 was a spreadsheet posted on Reddit that a disgruntled husband typed up and presented to his wife detailing all of the excuses she had given him for not having sex.  It was just a new spin on an ever-popular topic: married men who aren’t getting any.

This issue is always approached as a wife who’s gotten lazy or gotten the ring and then hit the husband with the old “bait and switch.” The conversation then becomes “please your man or he’ll stray.” What is always lost in the discussion is a focus on any of reasons why sex may stop being a desire for women. Rarely does the focus turn to what a husband may or may not be doing to elicit such a non-reaction from his wife in the first place.

I do not believe that most women are holding out from laziness or for manipulation’s sake, nor do I believe that all men are “at fault.” I do believe, however, that usually both parties are playing some role in a relationship’s breakdown and that by throwing the entire obligation on the woman, we take away the ability to meet somewhere in the middle.

So if you feel like your sex life is less than satisfactory, I’ve listed a few reasons why your wife might not be having sex with you as often as you would like (and what to do about it).

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