If I described my life to my friends just by listing the facts, most of them would say I hit the jackpot. We’ve been together for ten years, married for three, have three healthy children and a renovated house. No cheating, no debts, no shouting or smashing plates. My husband is a model dad, earns good money, happily picks up the kids from preschool, and mows the lawn on weekends.
But behind our bedroom door lies a relationship that for the past two years has resembled two siblings sharing a dorm room.
The last time we slept together was in mid-2024, when we conceived our youngest daughter. Since then, nothing at all has happened. No sex, no tenderness, not even a simple touch on the back when we pass each other in the hallway. Just writing this out loud feels incredibly embarrassing and humiliating.
And it’s not because of a heart attack, surgery, cancer, or clinical depression. My husband had a check-up, his bloodwork is perfect. He just switched off. He completely lost any interest in women.
Looking back, I have to admit a harsh truth. In the beginning, I was head over heels in love. He liked me, but now I know I was mainly a safe, practical choice for him—a reliable girl with whom it made sense to start a family and tick off another life goal. And as the years went by, the spark faded on my end too. I respect him as a partner and a great father, but as a man, he’s absolutely dead to me.
What gets me the most is the huge gap between us. I’m thirty-five. After three kids, I still work on myself, watch what I eat, keep my weight just a few kilos from what I had at twenty, dress nicely, and want to feel attractive.
My husband, on the other hand, has given up on everything. He’s gained fifteen kilos, spends his evenings on the couch with a beer and a cigarette, and the only thing that interests him is work and making money. He doesn’t care about his health or appearance at all. He never comes over just to hug me. When we go to bed, he turns to his side and is asleep within a minute.
We’ve gotten used to functioning like a perfectly coordinated operations team. We handle after-school activities, shopping, car maintenance, the mortgage, and school assignments. In that, we’re one hundred percent. But there’s no real life in it.
I sit alone in the kitchen in the afternoon over a bowl of cold food, staring at the wall and feeling my throat tighten. I’m thirty-five, and the thought that this is what the next thirty years of my life will look like terrifies me. That no man will ever take me in his arms with desire again, that I’ll never feel excitement or even a simple kiss that gives me goosebumps.
And the worst part is the guilt. I feel ungrateful, because I have a kind and secure man at home. Do I have the right to break up the family, split the house, and take a father away from three little kids just because of missing sex? I don’t know. All I know is that living in a marriage where you’re secure but completely lonely inside is a slow and silent death while still alive.
