I am a mother of two young girls. My husband works at a call center in Makati while I work in an office near our place in Ortigas. We are both driven to achieve our financial goals, so we do as much overtime work as we could. The downside is, because of his schedule, our times together as a family and as a couple have been suffering. We rarely get to spend quality time with our kids because when we’re home we are usually tired and just want to sleep.
Lately, I’ve been noticing that my husband is no longer interested in being intimate with me, which makes me doubt myself as a woman. Am I not attractive to him anymore? I’ve been trying to take care of my physical health and appearance but it seems he doesn’t care anymore.
How can we go back to our old intimacy?
Mom-Wife
Dear Mom-Wife,
In family life, one thing affects the other. In your case, your financial goals are affecting your married life and intimacy. Let me ask a few questions here:
Apart from being intimate, what do you when you are together? Do you still have shared interests in the family or as a couple? How is the emotional tone in your family — is it uplifting to be in or is there indifference or tension?
Leadership-wise, who leads the family in the financial goal that you said you have? Is it you or your husband? If it is a decision of one alone, did you get the commitment of the other to support it? If it is a common decision, do you have clear-cut ways on how to attain your goals? To what extent will you push for them? Do you talk about the goal itself and the process and challenges of attaining it?
Do you talk? If you do, what is the content of your conversations? Are they about functional matters, meaning finances and practical stuff? Do you ever talk about your feelings and your relationship, for that matter?
If your answer is mostly no or on the disheartening side, then I suggest you look into the details of your answers and find out the “why” on these. Then connect them to your bigger “why” in your marriage and family. The sad reality happening to many young marriages is that we get so engulfed with achieving our career and financial goals at the expense of the very people who are the reasons for what we do.
And so, after objectively poring over the details of your marriage, do not get stuck on analyzing. Be at the pro-active side by working on solutions.
First, humbly seek your husband. Spend time with each other. Seek a date or two with him by just getting a feel of things. It may be awkward but it’s supposed to start your connection.
If you are more comfortable, then talk. Have a real conversation about how you are and how the details of your life are affecting you — especially working so hard at the expense of your marriage. From this, you have to align with each other. Given the time difference in your work, see how you can ensure that you constantly see each other, spend time and “date” as husband and wife. Try to do again what you liked doing when you were still boyfriend and girlfriend. You may be the woman, but you are a married wife and so you can show your love and intentions by speaking his love language.
Physical intimacy is not the mere measure that the marriage is doing well. Emotional intimacy should be established in order for the passion and connection in the marriage to flow through from a sincere love for each other. Yet, couples do not talk about this aspect much. They just sense or indirectly see if this will happen.
If you know that your husband is open and accepting, talk about the status of your marital sexual life. Be comfortable and open in discussing, even planning, on how you can bring back your passion for each other. This should be fueled not by mere sexual desire, but more of the longing and physical connection that spouses should have.
Married life does not just happen. You have to make it happen. We worry how our family is, yet we forget that we have a marriage to attend to — now. Do not take any chances, get out of your comfort zone, and work on it.
Blessings to the best of your family life,
Michele
This article was previously published in Family Reborn, but has since been updated.